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Red Star Over Shambhala: Soviet, British and American Intelligence & the Search for Lost Civilisation in Central Asia

BY DR. RICHARD SPENCE

On his way across the wastes of Mongolia in 1921, Polish writer and refugee Ferdinand Ossendowski witnessed some strange behaviour on the part of his Mongol guides. Stopping their camels in the middle of nowhere, they began to pray in great earnestness while a strange hush fell over the animals and everything around. The Mongols later explained that this ritual happened whenever “the King of the World in his subterranean palace prays and searches out the destiny of all people on Earth.”1
From assorted lamas, Ossendowski learned that this King of the World was ruler of a mysterious, but supposedly very real, kingdom, “Agharti.” In Agharti, he was told, “the learned Panditas [masters of Buddhist arts and sciences] write on tablets of stone all the science of our planet and of the other worlds.”2 Whoever gained access to the underground realm would have access to incredible knowledge – and power.
Ossendowski was not exactly a casual listener. As noted in a previous article [The “Bloody” Baron von Ungern-Sternberg: Madman or Mystic?, New Dawn No. 108 (May-June 2008)], during 1921 he would become a key adviser to “Mad Baron” Roman von Ungern-Sternberg who established a short-lived regime in the Outer Mongolian capital of Urga.3 A self-proclaimed warrior Buddhist who dreamed of leading a holy war in Asia, the Baron allegedly tried to contact the “King of the World” in hopes of furthering his scheme.
Ossendowski’s credibility later was assailed by the likes of Swedish explorer Sven Hedin.4 Among other things, Hedin accused the Pole of plagiarising the story of Agarthi from an earlier work by French esotericist Joseph Alexandre St.-Yves d’Alveydre.5 To one extent or another, that probably was true, but Hedin, a veteran seeker after lost cities, did not dismiss the possibility of a hidden Kingdom; indeed, he likely harboured the aim of finding it himself.
In any event, Ossendowski did not invent the story of a fabulous land secreted somewhere in – or under – the vastness of Central Asia, be it called Agharti, Agarttha, Shangri-la, or, most commonly, Shambhala.6 Some believed it to be a physical, subterranean realm inhabited by an ancient, advanced race, while to others it was a spiritual dimension accessible only to the enlightened. The Shambhala legend is firmly grounded in Buddhist tradition which vaguely puts the Kingdom somewhere to the north of India. The legend also proclaimed that a time would come when the King of Shambhala and his mighty hosts would come forth to vanquish evil and usher in a golden age guided by pure Dharma. As noted, Baron von Ungern-Sternberg envisioned himself as the initiator of this “Shambhala War.” So would others.
The tantalising possibility of a hidden trove of advanced knowledge and technical know-how did not just pique the curiosity of explorers and occultists. The practical advantages to be gained by accessing and exploiting such knowledge was not lost on certain politicians and intelligence officers, above all in Soviet Russia. But whatever attracted the attention of the Bolsheviks was bound to draw British curiosity as well, and where both those powers were concerned, the Americans, Germans and Japanese were unlikely to be far behind.
This article focuses on the activities of three men, two Russians and one American: Aleksandr Vasil’evich Barchenko, the so-called “Bolshevik professor of the occult,” the artist-mystic-explorer Nicholas Roerich, and the man often cited as the real-life model for Indiana Jones, Roy Chapman Andrews. While, so far as can be told, none of the trio ever met, all were involved with expeditions roaming the deserts of Mongolia and the high valleys of the Himalayas in search of lost civilisation and ancient man. In the case of Barchenko and Roerich, the specific object was Shambhala. As we will see, these explorations were only the tip of a clandestine iceberg of intrigue and hidden agendas which included secret societies and a host of spies. Just who was doing what for whom – and why – remains uncertain.

“Bolshevik professor of the occult” Aleksandr Barchenko

A.V. Barchenko was born in Elets in 1881 and manifested an early interest in the “paranormal.” Part occultist, part scientist, part explorer, and maybe just a bit of a charlatan, Barchenko was, above all, a seeker. His interests came to focus on recovering the lost knowledge of a prehistoric civilisation, remnants of which he thought might still survive. It was in medical school, c. 1901-1905, that Barchenko gravitated to Masonic and Theosophist circles and their esoteric doctrines. One of his professors was acquainted with the above Saint-Yves d’Alveydre, and so introduced his pupil to the legend of Agarttha/Shambhala.
D’Alveydre’s works also promoted the mystical-political doctrine of Synarchy, a system supposedly perfected by the denizens of the hidden Kingdom. Loosely defined, Synarchy signifies “rule by secret society” or enlightened elite. In the late 19th century, the idea was picked up by yet another French occultist, Gerard Encausse, better known as Papus, who combined it with another mystical current, Martinism, to form the quasi-Masonic Ordre Martiniste et Synarchie.7 During 1900-1905, Papus visited Russia where he established cells of his new order and even recruited members among the Romanovs.8 More intriguing are suggestions that Papus simultaneously functioned as a French “agent of influence” to counter German intrigue among the Russian elite and, more secretly, to foster social revolution. One associate of Papus later claimed that Martinism was the “germ of Sovietism.”9
Prior to World War I, Barchenko embarked on a career as journalist and writer. At the same time, he joined the Martinist Order and the “Kabbalistic Order of the Rose & Cross.”10 His ever-widening interest in the occult came to include palmistry, the Tarot, alchemy, hypnosis, “radiant energy,” astrology and mind-reading. In 1911 he wrote an article for Priroda i liudi (“Nature and People”) on “thought transference.”11 His literary outpourings included two “fantastic” novels, Doktor Chernyi (“Dr. Black”) and Iz mrak (“From the Darkness”). His literary alter ego, Dr. Aleksandr Nikolaevich Chernyi, had spent years in India and Tibet studying arcane knowledge at the feet of mysterious mahatmas. Barchenko dreamed of doing the same.
After brief service in World War I, Barchenko returned to Petrograd (the renamed St. Petersburg) where he moved deeper into occult circles. One self-proclaimed master of Eastern mysticism who frequented Petrograd in this period was George Gurdjieff. Whether Barchenko had direct contact with him is uncertain, but he was well-versed in Gurdjieff’s teachings and the two would be linked in curious ways in the years ahead.
While Barchenko welcomed the overthrow of Tsar Nicholas in 1917, he was not enamoured of Lenin’s Bolsheviks. Still, to earn a living in the post-October environment, he began giving lectures on esoteric subjects to the revolutionary sailors of the Baltic Fleet. He used Shambhala as an example of a “primeval communist society,” which had been part of a prehistoric “great universal federation of peoples.”12 Such Bolshevik-sounding sentiments contrasted with his more private affiliations. In the “Sphinx” society, Barchenko associated with Martinists, Theosophists and “Christian pacifists” who were out-and-out enemies of Soviet power. He later confessed that the group harboured “conspiratorial quarters of the White Guards” and connived with militant anti-Bolsheviks such as Boris Savinkov.13 Savinkov, in turn, actively conspired with British and French agents, among them Ace-of-Spies Sidney Reilly who helped concoct an abortive effort to overthrow Lenin in the summer of 1918.14
One result of that failed plot was the “Red Terror,” a wave of bloody reprisals spearheaded by the Bolshevik secret police, the Cheka. So, when Barchenko received a summons to the office of the Petrograd Cheka (P-Cheka) in the fall of 1918, it was an ominous sign. However, he found there a cadre of fellow Martinists and students of the occult who had no interest in shooting him as a counter-revolutionary.15
The most important of these chekisty was Konstantin Konstantinovich Vladimirov, a self-described “psychographologist” who would do much to promote Barchenko and his ideas within the Soviet establishment. On the surface, it would appear that Vladimirov recruited Barchenko as an informer in occult circles, but things may not have been so simple.
Vladimirov’s own loyalties are questionable. He soon was involved in the case of two Britons, Harold Rayner and G.H. Turner, arrested for supposed involvement in the August 1918 assassination of the chief of P-Cheka, Moisei Uritsky. The actual gunman was a follower of the above Boris Savinkov. Even more interesting, Vladimirov and comrades apparently nabbed the wrong men. Then, instead of being executed, one somehow managed to evade proletarian justice and make it back to England.
Finally, Vladimirov became romantically involved with the widow of the second Englishman, a woman also identified as a British spy. As a result, he found himself booted from the Cheka, but somehow managed to get himself reinstated. However, in 1927 Vladimirov was again arrested and ultimately shot as an English spy, exactly as his protégé Barchenko would be a decade later.16 So, did Vladimirov recruit his fellow occultist to spy for the Cheka in 1918, or was he even then a British agent who enlisted the like-minded Barchenko into another, more secret conspiracy?
One more twist is that some insist Vladimirov was identical with another clandestine operative, Yakov Blumkin.17 That they were one and the same is demonstrably untrue, but Blumkin and Vladimirov did move in the same murky circles in 1918. Through those same circles, Blumkin also came to know Barchenko. Thus, there is reason to suspect, if no more, that Blumkin was another British double-agent. As a supposedly renegade chekist, he assassinated the German ambassador in Moscow in July 1918. Nevertheless, like Vladimirov, he soon found his way back into the good graces of Soviet intelligence. A year after Vladimirov’s demise, however, Blumkin would stand before a firing squad as a Trotskyite conspirator.
Barchenko also found friends in Soviet academia. With such backing, during 1921-22, he led an expedition to the remote Kola Peninsula, north of the Arctic Circle, where he found ancient petroglyphs and megalithic structures.18 This reinforced his belief in an advanced prehistoric civilisation linked to mysterious Shambhala.
As early as 1920, Barchenko sought permission to mount a “scientific-propagandistic” expedition into Mongolia and Tibet to search for “Red Shambhala.”19 Recovery of its ancient science and wisdom, he argued, would expand Moscow’s influence throughout Asia. This early lobbying came to naught, though it may have influenced Moscow to dispatch two Baltic sailors, Barchenko’s former “pupils,” on a secret mission to Tibet in the early 20s.20
At the same time, Barchenko founded a “Masonic” lodge dubbed the Edinoe Trudovoe Bratstvo, ETB, or the “United Labor Brotherhood.” The new Brotherhood included Vladimirov and numerous other current or former chekists. Closely associated with the ETB, if not a formal member, was Yakov Blumkin, back in the saddle as a special agent of Soviet intelligence.
The Lodge’s name bears a curious resemblance to an earlier group formed by Gurdjieff’s followers, the Edinoe Trudovoe Sodruzhstvo (“United Labor Fellowship”), and at least one prominent member of ETB, P.S. Shandarovskii, was a devotee of Gurdjieff.21 Another link may have existed through Soviet sculptor Sergei Merkurov, who was Gurdjieff’s cousin.22 Interestingly, Gurdjieff had alleged ties to British intelligence, including the charge that he had for years served as a British asset in Central Asia and the Near East.23 What is undeniable is that among Gurdjieff’s pupils in pre-Revolutionary Russia was English composer Sir Paul Dukes, a man whose interests included not only Gurdjieff, but also esoteric Buddhism and Tibet. Dukes joined MI1c (MI6) during World War I and for much of 1919 headed the British spy network in Petrograd.24 Could Barchenko and Vladimirov have been linked to this?
By far the most important brother of the ETB was chekist bigwig Gleb Ivanovich Bokii. Bokii, a veteran Bolshevik, had an equally venerable involvement in the occult. Among other things, he was a pre-Revolutionary member of the “Kabbalistic Order of the Rose & Cross.” Curiously, his advancement in that Order was approved by none other than Aleksandr Barchenko.25 More curious still, Bokii took over the P-Cheka after Uritsky’s death and was running the show when Barchenko was “recruited” in late 1918. Nevertheless, both men later swore that they never met until the early 1920s. Bokii would confess that for him the Revolution died with Lenin in early 1924. Growing disillusionment led him to oppose Stalin and to support Barchenko’s schemes, schemes that, he admitted, included espionage.26
By 1924, Bokii sat in control of the OGPU’s (the renamed Cheka) Spetsotdel, or “Special Department.” This outfit handled codes and included an elite outfit, the 7th Section, which delved into paranormal issues ranging from hypnotism and ESP to the Abominable Snowman.27 The Spetsotdel also guarded the so-called “black dossiers,” the personal files of the Soviet leaders which included sexual kinks and, undoubtedly, any association with things occult.28
Besides personal curiosity, Bokii had practical incentive to pursue paranormal research. Telepathic communication offered a perfect means to send and receive messages from agents abroad. Likewise, what we today call Remote Viewing offered the ability to spy on the imperialist enemy without leaving Moscow. Unlocking the secrets of hypnotism and mind control had potential application in propaganda. To explore such matters, Bokii put Barchenko in charge of a special “neuroenergetics” lab within the All-Union Institute for Experimental Medicine.29
Still, the primary aim of Barchenko and the ETB was establishing direct contact with Shambhala. To this end, he exploited Bokii’s help and made common cause with other esoteric groups, most notably the “Great Brotherhood of Asia.” He connived with at least two members of the Brotherhood, a Tibetan lama, Naga Naven, who claimed to be a direct representative of Shambhala, and a Mongolian official, Khayan Khirva, future chief of the Mongolian secret police.30 In that role, Khirva would work side-by-side with Yakov Blumkin.
In the spring of 1925, thanks to Bokii’s access to secret funds, the Shambhala expedition seemed set to go. Bokii picked Blumkin to head the expedition’s secret intelligence angle.31 But the plan ran into opposition. Dark rumours painted Bokii as a dangerous degenerate who drank human blood.32 A leading opponent was Mikhail Trilesser, head of the OGPU’s foreign intelligence branch (INO). He naturally felt that any activity outside the USSR fell into his bailiwick. By summer, Barchenko’s Shambhala expedition was dead. Or was it?
In September 1925, a humble Muslim pilgrim crossed the Pamir passes into British-controlled Kashmir. In fact, the pilgrim was Yakov Blumkin who was on his way to even more remote Ladakh to rendezvous with an expedition led by Nicholas Roerich. Roerich’s aim was to enter Tibet and contact Shambhala. However, soon after crossing the frontier, tribal police seized Blumkin. Apparently, someone had tipped-off the British. The crafty chekist soon gave his captors the slip, and assuming a new guise as a Mongol lama, pressed on towards Roerich. Anyway, that is how Blumkin later told the story. There could be another explanation. The brief arrest and fortuitous escape also gave Blumkin convenient cover to check-in with British intelligence prior to joining Roerich.

Russian Painter, Theosophist and Philosopher, Nicholas Roerich

Born in St. Petersburg in 1874, Nicholas (Nikolai) Konstantinovich Roerich is best known today as a painter and tireless advocate of Yoga and Buddhism in the West. He definitely was a Theosophist and probably a Martinist.33 He also became a secret Soviet agent-of-influence. Some of his admirers vociferously dispute this, and it may be true that Roerich used the Bolsheviks as much as they used him. Nevertheless, his ties to Soviet intelligence are too extensive to be denied.34
By the time the Revolution hit Russia, Roerich had left the country, and he initially showed no interest in the Great Socialist Experiment. By 1920, he was in London where he joined the local Theosophist scene dominated by Annie Besant. Besant and her followers were outspoken supporters of Indian independence which brought them under the scrutiny of British security. By the early 20s, Moscow had become the main benefactor of anti-British agitation in Asia and in the view of MI6’s Desmond Morton (later one of Churchill’s most trusted spies) “nearly all these theosophist and theosophical societies are connected in some way with Bolshevism, Indian revolutionaries and other unpleasant activities.”35
Roerich came to see British influence over Tibet as an evil he must combat, and during 1920 other things pushed him further towards Moscow. Roerich’s wife Elena (Helene), a medium, began receiving messages from an entity calling himself Master Morya, or Allal Ming, who claimed to be a member of the Great White Brotherhood and “spiritual teacher of Tibet.”36 Allal Ming convinced Roerich that he was the key to the fulfilment of a “Great Plan” which would end with creation of a vast, pan-Buddhist state that would encompass Tibet, Mongolia, parts of China, and much of Siberia. The first stage would be the “Shambhala War,” the end result of which would be the “earthly expression of the Invisible Kingdom of Shambhala.”37 The Plan is virtually identical to the one envisioned by Baron Ungern at almost the same time. However, whereas Ungern aimed to build his New Order by making war on the godless Bolsheviks, Roerich’s guide encouraged him to see the Soviets as allies and Lenin as a harbinger of a new, enlightened age. Perhaps the King of the World was hedging his bets.
At the same time, Roerich acquired a new follower in the person of a young Russian Theosophist, Vladimir Anatol’evich Shibaev. Shibaev also happened to be an agent for the Communist International (Comintern) working with Indian nationalists. He introduced the Roerich’s to other Soviet officials and encouraged their plans to move to India as a first step in realising the Great Plan. London’s MI5 kept a close eye on Shibaev and his dealings with Roerich.38
The Roerich’s moved to New York in October 1920. They thus evaded the hostile scrutiny of British authorities and secured support among wealthy Americans. One such benefactor was Wall Street broker Louis Levy Horch who helped found the Roerich Museum and became the Mystic’s financial manager and mainstay. Naturally, Horch, too, had a secret life. A successful businessman with important connections in American politics, he also was an underground operative for the Cheka/OGPU.39
The Roerich’s next relocated to Darjeeling, India in late 1923. This put them under the watchful eyes of Frederick Marsham Bailey, the British “political resident” in nearby Sikkim, and a man intimately familiar with Russian activities in Central Asia.
In spring 1925, Roerich was ready to launch his expedition into the Himalayas and beyond. The synchronicity with Barchenko’s plan seems more than coincidental and doubtless had something to do with the scuttling of that effort. Travelling under the American flag and backed by Yankee money, Roerich had the advantage of not being a blatant Soviet cat’s paw. Still, it is interesting that Bokii’s and Barchenko’s pal Blumkin should materialise at Roerich’s side. Whatever his connection to the British, did Blumkin maintain communication with his friends back in Moscow? Regardless, he and Roerich would roam the fringes of Tibet (never reaching Lhasa), and press on into Sinkiang and Mongolia. There was even time for a side-trip to Moscow where Roerich hob-nobbed with more Soviet officials. In fact, his expedition was Moscow-managed from beginning to end, whether Roerich fully realised it or not.
That fact was not lost on the British. During this period, MI6 monitored Red activities in Asia through one of its men in the Moscow embassy, Arthur V. Burbury. In 1928, persons in London concluded that Roerich had been “illuminated” as to the “excellence of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.”40

Real-Life Model for Indiana Jones, Roy Chapman Andrews

In contrast to Barchenko and Roerich, American Roy Chapman Andrews had no obvious interest in the occult and paranormal.41 Of course, given his curiosity about natural mysteries, he must have harboured a little about supernatural ones. Born in Wisconsin in 1884, Andrews evidenced an early lust for knowledge and adventure. By World War I, he had acquired a degree from Columbia University, membership in the exclusive Explorer’s Club and employment at the American Museum of Natural History (MNH).
His early explorations took him to China, which doubtless accounted for a new assignment that came his way in 1918. He travelled as a “naturalist” but he was really an officer of the US Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) assigned to the American Legation in Beijing.42 Befitting a good spy, Andrews was subsequently very mum about what he did there, but he made at least two “reconnaissance” trips into turbulent Mongolia, visiting its capital of Urga (where Baron Ungern would soon take charge) and venturing into Siberia where the Russian Civil War raged.43 Andrews subsequently compiled a map of the “Southern Boundary Region of Asiatic Russia” which found its way to the US Army’s Military Intelligence Division (MID).44 In his travels, did Andrews hear the same whispers of Agharti/Shambhala that reached the ears of Ossendowski, Roerich, and Barchenko?
Andrews left the Navy in the spring of 1919, but no sooner did he return to the States that he offered his services to the Army’s MID. His former boss in Beijing, US Naval Attaché Commander I.V. Gillis, vouched for Andrews as someone “who in case of emergency could be depended upon to do work with required skill and nerve,” and a colleague at the Museum of Natural History assured MID that Andrews was the “only American who is at all familiar with Mongolian.”45
Between 1922 and 1930, Andrews led five expeditions into the Gobi Desert and adjoining regions of Mongolia. All were sponsored by the MNH and made notable fossil discoveries, including the first dinosaur eggs. However, the original goal of the explorations was not animal fossils, but evidence of early man. Andrew’s boss at the Museum, Henry Fairfield Osborn, was convinced that the origins of the human race lay somewhere in Eastern or Central Asia. Some of his theories echoed those of the Theosophists, or so thought the Theosophists.46
From our perspective, the most interesting of Andrews’ forays was the one that commenced in early 1925 and took him and his companions deep into western Mongolia. The “mapmaking” team consisted of a US Army officer, Lt. Fred Butler, and a British officer, Lt. H.O. Robinson, detached from His Majesty’s Legation in Beijing.47 Butler’s later report also went to MID.48
Andrews might have gleaned information about Roerich’s activities from another explorer then roaming the wastes of Central Asia, Ossendowski’s nemesis, Sven Hedin. The Swede told Andrews that his expedition was a “reconnaissance” of a projected Lufthansa air route across Central Asia to Beijing, but it may have been something more.49In any case, Andrews dutifully reported his conversation with Hedin to MID.
In the end, Shambhala remained hidden, or so it seems. Roerich and Andrews went on to live out full lives and pass on, respectively, in 1947 and 1960. Barchenko, Bokii and the brethren of ETB were not so fortunate. All perished in the purges of the late 1930, condemned for crimes they did not – or did – commit.

Footnotes:

1. Ferdinand Ossendowski, Beasts, Men and Gods (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1922), 300.
2. Ibid., 311.
3. Richard Spence, “The ‘Bloody’ Baron von Ungern-Sternberg: Madman or Mystic?” New Dawn, No. 108 (May-June 2008), 31-36.
4. Sven Hedin, Ossendowski und die Wahrheit (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1925).
5. Joseph Alexandre St.-Yves d’Alveydre, Mission de l’Inde (1910). D’Alveydre, arguably, was in turn influenced by two other works: Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s The Coming Race (1870) and fellow Frenchman Louis Jacolliot’s Les Fils de Dieu (1873).
6. See, e.g., Jason Jeffrey, “Mystery of Shambhala,” New Dawn, No. 73 (May-June 2002), and Joscelyn Goodwin, Arktos: The Polar Myth in Science, Symbolism and Nazi Survival (Kempton, IL: Adventures Unlimited Press, 1996), 95-104.
7. Ostensibly a school of mystical Christianity, Martinism takes its name from the 18th century French esoteric philosopher, Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin.
8. Markus Osterrieder, “From Synarchy to Shambala: The Role of Political Occultism and Social Messianism in the Activities of Nicholas Roerich,” Paper presented at the conference on The Occult in 20th Century Russia, Berlin, March 2007, 11, n. 68.
9. Ibid., 11, n. 67.
10. Oleg Shishkin, Bitva za Gimalai ( Moscow: Eksmo, 2003), 31.
11. Anton Pervushin, Okkul’tnyi Stalin (Moscow: Yauza, 2006), 133.
12. Aleksandr Andreev, Okkul’tist Strany Sovetov (Moscow: Yauza/Eksmo, 2004), 101.
13. Ibid., 74.
14. On the intrigues of Reilly and Savinkov, see Richard Spence, Trust No One: The Secret World of Sidney Reilly (Los Angeles: Feral House, 2002), especially, Chapter Nine.
15. Pervushin, 143-144.
16. Andreev, 91.
17. Aleksei Velidov, Pokhozhdeniia terrorista: Odisseia Yakova Bliumkina (Moscow: Sovremnik, 1998), 243.
18. Pervushin, 144-152. The expedition centred on the region of Lovozero-Seidozero.
19. Aleksandr Andreev, Soviet Russia and Tibet: The Debacle of Secret Diplomacy, 1918-1930s (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 108-109.
20. Andreev, 101.
21. Shishkin, 105-106.
22. Ibid., 259.
23. E.g., Peter Roberts, “Gurdjieff’s Origins,” www.promart.com/g.origins.html, (12 May 2008).
24. See: Sir Paul Dukes, The Story of “ST 25”: Adventure and Romance in the Secret Intelligence Service in Red Russia (London: Cassell, 1938).
25. Shishkin, 31.
26. Protokol dopros [Interrogation] of Bokii, 18-18 May 1937, in Andreev (2004), 360-361.
27. Shishkin, 177.
28. Ibid., 367.
29. Shishkin, 179, Pervushin, 171-173, and “Barchenko, Aleksandr Vasil’evich,” Liudi i sud’by,http://memory.pvost.org/pages/barchenko.html.
30. Protokol dopros [Interrogation] of Bokii, 17-18 May 1937, in Andreev (2004), 354-355.
31. Shishkin, 197.
32. Ibid., 203.
33. Osterrieder, 12 and n. 78.
34. Ibid., 1 and n. 3, and Shishkin, passim.
35. Gill Bennett, Churchill’s Man of Mystery: Desmond Morton and the World of Intelligence (Routledge: London, 2007), 72.
36. Osterrieder, 2, 4 and n. 8.
37. Ibid, 1.
38. Shishkin, 48.
39. Shishkin, 68.
40. UK, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, notes on July 1928 exchange between India Office and Foreign Office.
41. On Andrews, see: Charles Gallenkamp, Dragon Hunter: Roy Chapman Andrews and the Central Asiatic Expeditions (New York: Penguin Books, 2001).
42. Andrews US Passport application, 18 June 1918.
43. Gallenkamp, 72-73.
44. US National Archives, Records of the Military Intelligence Division, MID, 10989-H-12/8, MID to George H. Sherwood, 20 Jan. 1922.
45. MID, 2338-H-12/39, Report from N.A. China, 5 July 1921, and MID 2657-H-158/2, Clarence A. Manning to MID, 8 Nov. 1921.
46. G. de Purucker, Theosophy and Modern Science, Pt. I [Reprint] (Whitefish, MT: Kessinger, 2003), 101.
47. Gallenkamp, 188.
48. MID, 2055-632-5, C of E to G2, 5 April 1926.
49. MID, 2657-D-935/2, HA, 29 April 1927.

.

Dr. RICHARD SPENCE is a professor of History at the University of Idaho. Among other works, he is the author of Trust No One: The Secret World of Sidney Reilly (Feral House, 2002). His latest book is Secret Agent 666: Aleister Crowley, British Intelligence and the Occult, published by Feral House.

The above article appeared in New Dawn 109 (July-August 2008).

newdawnmagazine.comhttp://www.newdawnmagazine.com/articles/the-eden-experiment-aliens-archons-the-associative-universe

The Eden Experiment: Aliens, Archons & the Associative Universe

September 1, 2008

 By 

davidjones

By REV. ILLUMINATUS MAXIMUS

—

In the timeless library of human myths and legends, perhaps none are more primal and disturbing than the biblical story of the Fall. Responsible for everything from the demonisation of women to the Church’s pious horror for nature, sex and the body, there is scarcely a life-hating ideology or barbaric practice it hasn’t been used to justify.

For all that, this strange and unsettling story has lost none of its melancholy power over the centuries, remaining as enigmatic and haunting as a dimly remembered nightmare – and almost no closer to being understood today than the day it was first told.

If “God” is all-powerful, then why did He need to test Adam and Eve at all? Wouldn’t a real supreme being already know what was going to happen? Why did the serpent seem like the only one who really understood what was going on? And who was God talking to when he fretted that Adam had become “like one of us”1?

Observes libertarian “anti-psychiatrist” Thomas Szasz:

Adam’s apple is so named because a piece of the biblical forbidden fruit is supposed to have stuck in his throat… Perhaps this is why the Forbidden Truth so often appears ‘chewed up’, transformed into metaphor, humour, satire, slang (or dream and myth, of course).2

In this essay I’d like to take the unusual step of examining the Eden myth, not through the lens of traditional theology or atheist reductionism, but instead from the perspective of a few fringe phenomena it isn’t usually associated with: alien abductions and the occult “serpent power” of Eastern mysticism.

As we shall discover, these apparent discrepancies aren’t mistakes at all, but instead represent the sole surviving keys to uncovering its true meaning – for the legend of Adam and Eve originally had nothing to do with human sin or divine punishment.

Instead, the story of the “Garden Eden” comes to us as a distorted version of primitive man’s first recorded encounter with uncanny beings from the stars – a botched abduction attempt culminating in the spontaneous illumination of two very confused cavemen.

What this means for religion in general, and monotheism in particular, I shall leave for the reader to divine on their own.

We shall see that at which dogs howl in the dark, and that at which cats prick up their ears after midnight. We shall see these things, and other things which no breathing creature has yet seen. We shall overleap time, space, and dimensions, and without bodily motion peer to the bottom of creation.
– H.P. Lovecraft, From Beyond

UFOs – A Modern Problem?

Since the dawn of the space age, man’s dreams have been haunted by strange visions of cigar or saucer shaped aircraft bearing vaguely foetal (or insectoid) passengers who kidnap, brainwash and even impregnate their human captives before erasing their memories and vanishing into the ether.

Like “out of body” experiences or spirit possession, the UFO phenomenon stands as one of those baffling “psychic” anomalies which seems to exist for the sole purpose of mocking human reason. Claims one “victim”:

I woke up in the middle of the night and everything looked odd and strangely lit. At the end of my bed was a 4 feet high grey alien. Its spindly, thin body supported a huge head with two enormous, slanted, liquid black eyes. It compelled me, telepathically, to follow and led me into a spaceship… examination room [where]… I was forced to lie down while they… implanted something in my nose. I could see jars containing half-human, half-alien fetuses and a nursery full of silent, sickly children. When I eventually found myself back in bed, several hours had gone by.3

French astrophysicist Jacques Vallee studied the alien abduction phenomenon for decades, wondering continually at the arbitrary and illogical nature of most such reports. Why do these supposed “wise explorers from the stars” behave so bizarrely? If they have the advanced technology necessary for interstellar travel, why would they use it to visit this planet, let alone kidnap housewives, farmers and convenience store clerks for the purpose of anal probing? Observed Vallee’s mentor, J. Allen Hynek:

To me, it seems ridiculous that super intelligences would travel great distances to do relatively stupid things like stop cars, collect soil samples, and frighten people. I think we must begin to re-examine the evidence. We must begin to look closer to home.4

Vallee’s Rejection of the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis of Alien Contact

Researching hundreds of “contactee” testimonials, folkloric narratives and world mythologies, Vallee eventually concluded that UFOs aren’t what they seem to be. They don’t hail from the Zeta Reticula galaxy, they aren’t here to explore or conduct genetic experiments and their presence on this planet isn’t a recent development at all. Instead, notes Vallee:

Reports of uncanny visitors from the sky have plagued mankind for thousands of years – enough to rule out short-term exploration as a motive.

Witnesses typically describe the “aliens” as humanoid bipeds able to breathe our atmosphere and see in our light spectrum – but wouldn’t genuine extraterrestrials be adapted to a completely different type of environment?

The aliens’ supposedly “scientific” experiments are “crude to the point of being grotesque…. often accompanied by sadistic sexual manipulation [and] reminiscent of medieval encounters with demons” – not the sort of behaviour we might expect from an advanced civilisation!5

Finally, since UFOs seem able to appear and disappear at will, they are probably “not just a bunch of spacecraft” but instead represent “a much more interesting technology that manipulates dimensions. It manipulates space-time. And if it can do that, then [the aliens could] be from anywhere and anytime.”6

Frustrated with the unquestioned assumptions and cultish insularity of contemporary ufology, Vallee instead suggests three alternatives to the “Extraterrestrial Hypothesis” (EH) based on “second level” readings of the UFO phenomenon – speculative scenarios notable less for what they say about UFOs than about the structure of physical reality itself:

The Inter-Dimensional Hypothesis

One possibility is that aliens are not from another planet, but instead represent “evidence for other dimensions beyond spacetime”⁷ – extradimensional entities hailing from an uncanny world which overlaps but only occasionally intrudes upon our own, beings from the future (or a perhaps a ghostly copy of our own earth) using “four-dimensional wormholes for space and even time travel”8 through the “multiverse which is all around us.”9

This “multiverse” could consist of parallel worlds existing alongside each other in different dimensions of space, alternate past and future worlds following one another in time, or even computer-generated “virtual worlds” stored in some vast cosmic database (as in the film ‘The Matrix’); if this latter instance is true, hints Vallee, then the seemingly stable and predictable world in which we find ourselves could be a much more magical (or even whimsical) place than we normally realise:

If there is no time dimension as we usually assume there is, [then] the human brain may be traversing events by association… If we live in the associative universe of the software scientists rather than the sequential universe of the spacetime physicist, then miracles are no longer irrational events… [and the] illusion of time and space would be merely a side effect of consciousness as it traverses associations. In such a theory, apparently paranormal phenomena like remote viewing and precognition would be expected, even common, and UFOs would lose much of their bizarre quality…10

The Electromagnetic Connection

Another promising vein of inquiry originates with the work of Dr. Michael Persinger, a cognitive neuroscientist at Laurentian University in Canada whose 1975 “Tectonic Stress Theory” holds that UFOs, out-of-body experiences and mystical visions of saints and angels are the byproducts of electrical microseizures (i.e., epileptic episodes) resulting from exposure to electromagnetic fields generated by shifting plates in the Earth’s crust.

Persinger’s experiments include the construction of the “God helmet,” a specially modified motorcycle helmet which uses weak EM fields to stimulate the parietal and temporal lobes of the brain. Shockingly, almost 80% of the 900 subjects thus tested report altered states of consciousness, visions of God and dead loved ones, and even full-blown alien abductions.11

More radical still is Paul Devereux’s 1989 “Earth Lights” hypothesis, in which UFOs appear as some sort of “previously unrecognised terrestrial phenomenon” (think Will O’ the Wisps) which either rely upon or are attracted to the EM fields generated by seismic stress.

Devereux notes that the strange balls of light which appear and hover near or around earthquake fault lines behave at times almost like “inquisitive animals” and speculates that they may be intelligent “macro-quantal” blobs of plasma energy capable of telepathy, mimicry and hypnosis.12

Both theories in turn anticipate the research of Johnjoe McFadden, an English neuroscientist at the University of Surrey whose Conscious Electromagnetic Field Theory (CEMI) locates human thought outside the wet, grey labyrinth of the brain, identifying it instead with a weak electromagnetic field which surrounds and penetrates the skull.13

If McFadden is correct, then the entire sensory environment we perceive all around us could be nothing more than an extremely sophisticated communications broadcast of some sort – perhaps just one of many “channels” available to the human nervous system.

The Control System Hypothesis

Vallee’s final alternative to the EH is his “Control System” Hypothesis, a fringe view in which aliens (or UFOs) appear as a non-human intelligence closely linked to the Earth, but not bound by it – not little green men from far-flung planets but hallucinatory imps from a dreamlike hyperspace who always seem to appear in just about the form we expect to see them.

Once upon a time these interacted and appeared to us as gods, spirits and angels, accepting sacrifices, sending dreams and inspiring mankind’s great religions; then as fairies, goblins, elves and spirits, spreading fear and wonder in the lives of medieval peasants; and finally as space-faring “greys,” reptilian humanoids and noble “Plaeaidian” scientists, bearing cryptic warnings about the environment and seeding new mythologies for the Information age.

So why have these protean tricksters chosen to visit us? Perhaps Vallee’s most controversial claim is that these mysterious visitors are themselves mere epiphenomena, shadows and reflections of a vast (and very ancient) “control system” which has been operating in the background to manipulate human belief systems since time immemorial, guiding our species towards some unknown purpose. Notes Vallee:

If UFOs are having an action at [the level of myth] it will be almost impossible to detect it by conventional methods… because they are the means by which man’s concepts are being rearranged. All we can do is trace their effect…14

This “control system,” Vallee hypothesises, could represent a projection of the collective unconscious, the activity of an unknown species or even some sort of ecosystemic feedback loop.15

Vallee’s Control System and the Origins of Western Religion

If mankind’s long flirtation with gods, ghosts, goblins and grays is anything to go by, Vallee’s alien “control system” has been with us since the very beginning – and for evidence of its influence, we need look no further than the origins of Abrahamic monotheism.

Take, for example, the story of the Garden of Eden, an eerie tale which – with only a little imagination – can easily be read as a coded account of an alien abduction, an extraterrestrial interlude in which speaking primates are tested for obedience and adaptability:

Omniscient keeper(s) create a man (or remove him?) from the “earth”;

Test subject is anesthetised;

Keepers produce a female specimen supposedly cloned from his “rib”;

Test subjects are placed in a controlled environment and forbidden from eating a certain type of food;

A writhing hologram appears (the “shining serpent”) and encourages them to violate the Keepers’ directives;

Subjects are punished and returned to the wild to digest their encounter.

Now, is this all there is to the story – ancient astronauts tampering with primitive man? Admittedly, that would be incredible if true – but wouldn’t alien scientists have been able to conceal even the most elaborate breeding and colonisation program from a pair of cavemen?

What if the real agenda behind the Eden incident was not creation (or obedience testing) but something else entirely?

Remarks Vallee:

If the phenomenon is forcing us through a learning curve, then it has no choice but to mislead us. When Skinner designs a machine that feeds a rat only when the right lever is depressed, this is extremely misleading for the rat. But if the rat doesn’t depress the correct lever, he becomes extremely hungry. Man is hungry for knowledge and power, and if there is an intelligence behind the UFOs it must have taken this fact into account…16

Perhaps instead of looking at the biblical “Fall” as a failed experiment, we should instead think of it as what Vallee calls an “open control system” – a metalogical labyrinth whose participants “graduate” to the next level when the correct sequence of stimuli are triggered – in this case, eating the “forbidden fruit.”

In other words, “Adam” and “Eve” didn’t fail the test when they ate from the “Tree of Knowledge” – they passed it.

Open Control Systems and Mythological Mashups

This alternate reading of the Eden creation myth is reinforced in the scriptures of the ancient Gnostics, an unorthodox (some say “heretical”) movement in early Christianity that competed with the infant Catholic church for several centuries after the birth of Christ.

Often dismissed as a primitive heresy that fell under the weight of its own obscurantist tendencies, Gnosticism was instead a sophisticated system of occult hermeneutics whose acolytes employed special neurolinguistic trance-inducing techniques to engage in a sort of memetic sabotage, splicing, remixing and mutating of biblical stories in a manner seemingly calculated to cause maximum offense and psychological discomfort. But why? Notes one literary critic:

Drugs, sex, and power control the body, but “word and image locks” control the mind, that is, “lock” us into conventional patterns of perceiving, thinking, and speaking that determine our interactions with environment and society. The cutup is a way of exposing word and image controls and thus freeing oneself from them, an alteration of consciousness that occurs in both the writer and the reader of the text.17

For the Gnostics, the biblical creation stories weren’t divine revelations, but the shattered fragments of a monstrous and malevolent spell – the control system. By rearranging and retelling Judeo-Christian myths, the Gnostics sought clues that might allow them to reprogram creation itself, changing the past, seizing control of the heavens, and overthrowing the phony god of the Bible.

The Gnostic Version(s) of the Eden Myth

In the Gnostic view, Eden was not a paradise, but a jungle laboratory where an opportunistic race of alien parasites conducted a series of bizarre experiments in an attempt to produce a compliant strain of biped slaves.

Banished from the stars at the dawn of time, these “archons” (Greek for “rulers”) fled to the Earth where they abducted a caveman named “Adam” and sexually assaulted his mate “Eve,” implanting both with false (or screen) memories:

When they [the archons] saw Eve speaking with [Adam], they said to one another… “Come, let us seize her and let us cast our seed on her, so that… those whom she will beget will serve us. But let us not tell Adam that she is not derived from us, but let us bring a stupor upon him, and… teach him in his sleep as though she came into being from his rib…18

Feared and worshipped as “gods” and “angels,” the Archons depend for their very existence on the energy captured and siphoned from the human nervous system via various control systems – biological and memetic thermostats which allow them to regulate the flow of information and energy through words and images, pleasure and pain:

They say that the soul is the food of the Archons and Powers without which they cannot live, because she is of the dew from above and gives them strength…19

Adam and Eve “fell” when the archons programmed them with prohibitions and commandments, changing them from primates living in the eternal “now” to “soft machines” – biological automata at war with their own instincts, parasitised by selfish replicators and paralysed by double-binds:

….when the Rulers saw [Adam] and the woman who was with him, erring in ignorance… they rejoiced greatly… They came to Adam… [and] said to him, “Every tree which is in Paradise, whose fruit may be eaten, was created for you. But beware! Don’t eat from the Tree of Knowledge…” [T]hey gave them a great fright….20

Unfortunately for the archons, this strange prohibition seems to have provoked its own violation – for, as the Gnostic scriptures inform us:

[the archons] do not understand what they have said to [Adam]; rather… they said this in such a way that he might in fact eat…21

Pushed to the brink by a mysterious talking serpent, Adam and Eve partook of the fruit and convulsed with ecstasy as the walls of the Garden fell away to reveal the larger world outside the Garden. Like lab rats suddenly lifted out of a maze, Adam and Eve could now perceive their own situation clearly for the very first time:

Then their mind opened. For when they ate… they saw that they were naked, and they became enamoured of one another. When they saw their makers, they loathed them since they were beastly forms. They understood very much…22

Serpent Power Rising

A few more details complete this curious picture: Adam, we learn, was created with “seven souls”23; the “serpent” was actually a “hidden Mother” goddess named “Sophia” who fought against the archons from her secret location inside Adam’s “intestines”(!)24; and finally, when Eve fled from the archons, she took refuge inside the “Tree of Knowledge”25 (in biblical Hebrew, the word for “tree” can also mean “spine.”).

If any of this sounds familiar, it should – for as countless researchers have noted, the entire story seems to be nothing more than an allegorical description of the Kundalini serpent of Buddhist and Hindu yoga:

A Tantric yogi sees the great Mother present within his human body as the Kundalini. She lies hidden by her self-created ignorance, like a snake, coiled and fast asleep… at the bottom of the spinal cord. Through [meditation], the Tantric awakens the Mother and rouses her to go upward… [until he] becomes illumined…26

Theories about the Kundalini Serpent

Frequently misunderstood as an exotic oddity unique to Eastern mysticism, the kundalini instead represents a cross-cultural phenomenon of great antiquity (and plasticity) which (like the UFO phenomenon) has many features in common with OBEs, NDEs, spirit possession and shamanic initiation.

In short, the belief is that the human body possess seven (sometimes more) energy centres called “chakras,” roughly located near or in the anus, genitals, stomach, heart, throat, brow and crest of the skull. Normally clogged with the traumata of everyday life, these “chakras” open when stimulated by a serpentine energy which normally lies sleeping and coiled at the base of the spine.

In dreams, this serpent takes the form of a sleeping goddess who projects the illusion of the world; awakened, she climbs the spine to open the “third eye” at the crown of the head, bringing explosive emotional, psychological and spiritual growth, even ecstasy, enlightenment and the acquisition of occult powers.

Although the scientific study of the kundalini is still in its infancy, there do exist many plausible theories which might some day explain how it works. Here are a few of them:

Reichian/Bioenergetic

Wilhelm Reich was a renegade disciple of Freud’s who discovered a type of libidinal energy called orgone which flows throughout the “seven segments”27 of the body, resembling nothing so much in its “slow undulation[s]” as “the movement of an intestine or snake.”28

In most of us, social and cultural programming cause this elusive life force to become blocked in early childhood so that it pools up in the muscles and hardens into a rigid “body armour.” Thus diverted from life, the stagnant energy becomes a machine-like parody of itself which stunts and distorts human emotions, turning healthy expressions of love and sexuality into addiction, resentment and fear.

In the long term, the suffocating obstacles imposed by this invisible exoskeleton cause untold misery by exacerbating the mind/body split and creating the conditions necessary for the emergence of cancer (in individuals) and fascism (in societies).

Unimpressed with the slow pace and ineffectiveness of traditional talk therapy, Reich favoured a direct, hands-on approach designed to weaken the body armour itself. Over time, Reich and his followers found that unplanned events of great emotional intensity could trigger the orgone to ascend through the seven body segments spontaneously, purging vast reserves of repressed emotional energy and causing the body to vibrate uncontrollably as the noxious “body armour” crumbled once and for all.

Mechanical

Czech inventor Itzhak Bentov dedicated years to the study of human consciousness, eventually developing what is today known as the “holographic model” of the human brain.

In Bentov’s view, the “kundalini experience” is primarily a mechanical phenomenon which arises when the brain begins to vibrate in sympathetic resonance with the heartbeat (7.5 hz), releasing terrific amounts of stored musculoskeletal stress as the nervous system is temporarily transformed into a polarised loop.

This in turn causes the spinal column to oscillate like a tuning fork, allowing it to receive and transmit information directly from the ionosphere – the same part of the atmosphere responsible for bouncing electromagnetic waves back to Earth.29

The Pineal Gland and the Third Eye

Finally, former New Mexico University psychiatrist Rick Strassman hypothesises that kundalini yoga somehow stimulates the pineal gland to secrete larger than normal amounts of naturally-occurring DMT into the brain – making it the true “third eye.”30

DMT is a powerful hallucinogen, also found in ayahuasca, the “vine of souls” used by Amazonian shamans to induce mystical visions; the pineal gland, meanwhile, has its own surprising analog in the photosensitive “third eye” found in many species of reptiles, a vestigial organ with full lens and retina buried under the skin in the centre of the forehead.31

The connections to biblical myth here are many and obvious, so what does it all mean?

Seeking to understand the roots of human religious experience, Strassman injected over 60 volunteers with high doses of DMT, conducting over 400 such sessions from 1990-1995; perhaps unsurprisingly, just over half his test subjects reported blissful visions of timeless, cosmic unity, communion with benevolent deities and “classic near-death experiences” which included flying through tunnels of “radiant light.”32

The other 47% were not so lucky, reporting nightmarish beings drawn straight from the twilight horror-world of the Gnostic counter-Eden: menacing “clowns, elves [and] robots” who threatened and even attacked their human victims. Strassman finally ended his experiments ahead of schedule when one of his subjects reported being “eaten alive” by giant insects.

Dragons in the Darkness

Strassman’s findings here echo the eerie experiences of Michael Harner, an American anthropologist who penetrated the Amazon rainforest forty years earlier to experiment with the “vine of souls” potion himself.

Harner reported seeing “giant reptilian creatures” dwelling in and around his own brain stem, “dragon-like” beings from deep space who colonised the Earth millennia ago; chillingly, these dark beings claimed to have seeded the Earth with life for the sole purpose of creating various host species they could hide themselves in.

“I learned that the dragon-like creatures were thus inside of all forms of life, including man,” claims Harner. “They were the true masters of humanity and the entire planet, they told me. We humans were but [their] receptacles and servants…”33

True to form, when Harner demanded an explanation from the medicine man who gave him the potion responsible for this ominous vision, the old man just laughed and explained that, “…they’re always saying that. But they are only the Masters of Outer Darkness…”34

Conclusion

Clearly Harner is speaking here of beings very much like the archons of Gnostic myth or the manipulative “greys” of modern Ufology – but are these entities nothing more than symbolic projections of the reptilian brain, as Harner’s narrative seems to imply?

Do aliens and archons hail from outer space or inner space? Why is “contact” with aliens (or archons) so often accompanied by vibrations or tremors, either muscular or tectonic? How should we think about the “serpent” now that we know it is probably a dormant evolutionary mechanism of some sort? And are the “big three” Abrahamic religions of Islam, Judaism and Christianity really nothing more than hallucinatory control mechanisms employed by alien parasites to enslave and manipulate us?

German Historian Klaus Theweleit has written what would seem to be the last possible word on the subject, noting that:

…[T]he ‘fall of man’ depicts a failed revolution from the victor’s standpoint. For attempting to put into practice their slogan ‘Our bodies belong to us,’ the rebels were sentenced to a life of forced labor… ‘Your bodies belong to your Ruler!’ – that was the response. (The ‘paradise’ they were driven out of was the blissful state of being ruled without realising it. Even today, being driven out of ‘paradise’ is the penalty for trying to create a paradise.)35

Whether the Eden story is really about UFOs or the kundalini, and whether such phenomena are electromagnetic or chemical in origin, I can’t say for sure (I’ve never even seen a UFO!), but I do know this:

I have taken mushrooms and seen great, flying black mantas which pursued me across the desert floor, telepathically overwhelming me with thoughts of paranoia and despair. I’ve taken DMT and left my body to enter a crystalline world of euphoric decahedrons and four-dimensional pyramids, spread out beneath a great vaulted membrane which breathed, and knew at that instant that this membrane was the threshold between time and eternity.

I’ve practiced tantric yoga with a dakini and been bruised and battered as I hyperventilated under the tutelage of a Reichian therapist; and I’ve been in dark rooms lit only by flickering candles, watching friends and family members pant as their eyes rolled back in their heads and their limbs shook uncontrollably, “mounted” by the spirits of the dead and personified forces of nature known to witch doctors the world over.

Whatever the origins of these and related “psychic” phenomena ultimately prove to be – genetic memories, autonomous archetypal complexes, glitches in the Matrix or even the intrusive activities of extraterrestrial civilisations – nothing will change for our species until we finally rise to our feet, shake off the chains of superstition and ignorance and claim our inheritance – not as childlike “test subjects” to be ordered about and punished, but as adults striding forth into the cosmos with eyes wide open, ready to take responsibility for our own evolution.

The Eden myth, like all myths, is meant to be lived; not studied but experienced – so let us treat the Bible with its endless commandments and airless authoritarianism not as the final authority on human life, but as a leaping off point for therediscovery of the human body as a sacred text in its own right, a flesh and blood book with its own sounds, smells and textures and even wisdom too – for in the end, it may be the only thing we can ever really know anyway.

Or, as the Gnostic scriptures put it:

You are the Tree of Knowledge, which is in Paradise, from which the first man ate and which opened his mind, so that he became enamoured of his co-likeness, and condemned other alien likenesses, and loathed them.36

Footnotes:

1. Genesis 3:22

2. Thomas Szasz, The Untamed Tongue, p.58, pub. 1990

3. Dr. Susan Blackmore, “Alien Abduction: The Inside Story,” New Scientist, November 19, 1994, pp.29-31

4. Dr. Jacques Vallee, Forbidden Science: Journals, 1957-1969, p.426

5. Ibid, p.17

6. “Strange Encounters: An Interview with Jacques Vallee” by Daniel Blair Stewart, excerpted from Green Egg Magazine, Vol. XXTV, No. 95, Yule 1991, republishedwww.bibliotecapleyades.net/ciencia/ciencia_vallee03.htm

7. Vallee, Dimensions: A Casebook of Alien Contact, p.253, pub. 1988

8. Vallee, Revelations: Alien Contact and Human Deception, p.255, pub. 2008

9. Vallee, Dimensions, p.253

10. Ibid, p.257

11. BBC – Science & Nature – Horizon – God on the Brain, www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2003/godonbrain.shtml

12. Paul Devereux, “Earth Lights: Abstracted from a presentation given at the Dana Center of the London Science Museum,” December 9, 2003,www.pauldevereux.co.uk/new/html/body_earthlights.html

13. JohnJoe McFadden, The Conscious Electromagnetic Field Theory, www.surrey.ac.uk/qe/cemi.htm

14. Vallee, Dimensions, p.246

15. Vallee, Revelations, p.254

16. Vallee, Dimensions, p.246

17. Jenny Skerl, William S. Burroughs, quoted in “William S. Burroughs Cut-ups,” http://languageisavirus.com

18. Willis Barnstone (editor), The Other Bible, “On the Origin of the World,” p.70, pub. 1984

19. Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Religion, p.169, pub. 1958

20. Barnstone, Ibid, p.71

21. Barnstone, Ibid, “The Hypostasis of the Archons,” p.77

22. Barnstone, Ibid, “On the Origin of the World,” p.71

23. Marvin W. Meyer, The Secret Teachings of Jesus: Four Gnostic Gospels, “The Secret Book of John,” pp.69-70, pub. 1986

24. Barnstone, Ibid, “The Sethian-Ophites,” p.664

25. Willis Barnstone (editor), The Other Bible, “On the Origin of the World,” p.70, pub. 1984

26. Elizabeth U. Harding, Kali: The Black Goddess of Dakshineswar, pp.70-71, pub. 1993

27. Roger M. Wilcox, “A Skeptical Scrutiny of the Works and Theories of Wilhelm Reich as related to Psychiatric Orgone Therapy (character-analytic vegetotherapy)”, pub. July 25, 2005, http://members.dslextreme.com/users/rogermw/Reich/orgone_therapy.html

28. Wilhelm Reich, The Cancer Biopathy: Volume II of the Discovery of the Orgone, pub. 1973

29. Wikipedia Article on Kundalini, www.crystalinks.com/kundalini.html

30. Ibid.

31. Schwab & O’Connor, “The Lonely Eye,” March 2005, www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1772576

32. John Horgan, “The God Experiments: Five researchers take science where it’s never gone before,” Discover Magazine, November 20, 2006.

33. Michael Harner, The Way of the Shaman, pp.4-5, 1980

34. Ibid.

35. Klaus Theweleit, Male Fantasies: Women, Floods, Bodies, History, pp.414-15, pub. 1987

36. Barnstone, Ibid, “On the Origin of the World,” pp.67-68

.

REV. ILLUMINATUS MAXIMUS is an occult researcher and visionary artist whose work has been featured in The Independent, New Dawn and Wired. A licensed minister, Rev. Max is widely credited for his role in introducing Gnosticism to the WWW. You can visit his website at www.enemies.com.

The above article appeared in New Dawn No. 110 (September-October 2008).

Julius Evola-Revolt Against the Modern World [book] (3)

Julius Evola-Revolt Against the Modern World [book] (3)

Contents 

PART I

The World of Tradition 

1. The Beginning 3 

2. Regality 7 

3. Polar Symbolism; the Lord of Peace and Justice 16 

4. The Law, the State, the Empire 21 

5. The Mystery of the Rite 29 

6. On the Primordial Nature of the Patriciate 35 

7. Spiritual Virility 42 

3--------------------------------------------------------------

8. The Two Paths in the Afterlife 47 

9. Life and Death of Civilizations 54 

10. Initiation and Consecration 60 

11. On the Hierarchical Relationship Between Royalty and Priesthood 68
................................................
................................................ 

=================================

The Two Paths in the Afterlife 

At this point it is necessary to discuss the connection between the order of ideas 

I have outlined so far and the problem of one's destiny in the afterlife. In this 

context too, reference should be made to teachings that have almost entirely been 

lost in recent times. 

The belief that everybody's soul is immortal is rather odd; very little evidence 

of it can be found in the world of Tradition. In Tradition, a distinction was made 

between true immortality, which corresponded to participation in the Olympian na- 

ture of a god, and mere survival; also, various forms of possible survival came into 

play and the problem of the postmortem condition of each individual was analyzed, 

always taking into consideration the various elements present in the human aggre- 

gate, since man was far from being reduced to the simple binomial "soul-body." 

What continuously emerges in various forms in ancient traditions is the teaching 

that in man, in addition to the physical body, there are essentially three entities or 

principles, each endowed with its own character and destiny. The first principle cor- 

responds to the conscious "I" typical of the waking state, which arose with the body 

and was formed in parallel with its biological development; this is the ordinary per- 

sonality. The second principle was called "demon'' "manes'', "Lar, and even "double." 

The third and last principle corresponds to what proceeds from the first entity after 

death; for most people, it is the "shadow.'' 

As long as a person belongs to "nature," the ultimate foundation of a human 

being is the daemon or "demon," (ΔΑΙΜΩΝ ln Greek); in this context the term does 

not have the evil connotation Christianity bestowed upon it. When man is considered 

from a naturalistic point of view, the demon, could be defined as the deep force that 

originally produced consciousness in the finite form that is the body in which it lives 

during its residence in the visible world. This force eventually remains "behind" the 

individual, in the preconscious and in the subconscious dimensions, as the founda- 

tion of organic processes and subtle relations with the environment, other beings, 

and with past and future destiny; these relations usually elude any direct perception. 

In this regard, in many traditions the demon corresponds to the so-called double, 

which is perhaps a reference to the soul of the soul or the body itself; this "double" 

has also often been closely associated with the primordial ancestor or with the totem 

conceived as the soul and the unitary life that generated a stock, a family, a gens, or 

a tribe, and therefore it. has a broader sense than the one given to it by some schools 

of contemporary ethnology. The single individuals of a group appear as various in- 

carnations or emanations of this demon or totem, which is the ''spirit '', pulsating in 

their blood; they live in it and it lives in them, though transcending them, just as the 

matrix transcends the particular forms it produces out of its own substance. In the 

Hindu tradition the demon corresponds to that principle of man's inner being called 

iinga-sarira. The word linga contains the idea of a generating power; hence, the 

possible derivation of genius from genere, which means to act in the sense of beget- 

ting; and hence, the Roman and Greek belief that the genius or Lar (demon) is the 

same procreating force without which a family would become extinct. It is also very 

significant that totems have often been associated with the "souls" of selected ani- 

mal species, and that especially the snake, essentially a telluric animal, has been 

associated in the classical world with the idea of demon or of genius. These two 

instances bear witness to the fact that in its immediacy this force is essentially 

subpersonal, and belongs to nature and to the infernal world. Thus, according to the 

symbolism of the Roman tradition, the seat of the lures is underground; they are in 

the custody of a female principle, Mania, who is the Mater Larum. 

According to esoteric teachings, at the death of the body an ordinary person 

usually loses his or her personality, which was an illusory thing even while that 

person was alive. The person is then reduced to a shadow that is itself destined to be 

dissolved after a more or Less lengthy period culminating in what was called "the 

second death." The essential vital principles of the deceased return to the totem, 

which is a primordial, perennial, and inexhaustible matter; life will again proceed 

from this matter and assume other individual forms, all of which are subject to the 

same destiny. This is the reason why totems, manes, lares, or penates (the gods of 

the Roman people, "to whom we owe the breath within us and by whom we possess 

our bodies and our power of thought") were identified with the dead; the cult of the 

ancestors, the demons, and the invisible generating force that is present in every- 

body was often confused with the cult of the dead. The "souls" of the deceased 

continued to exist in the dii manes into whom they were dissolved, but also in those 

forces of the stock, the race, or the family in which the life of these dii manes was 

manifested and perpetuated. 

This teaching concerns the naturalistic order. There is, however, a second teaching 

relating to a higher order and a different, more privileged, aristocratic, and sacred 

solution to the problem of survival after death. It is possible to establish a connection 

here with the ideas expressed above concerning those ancestors who, through their 

"victory," bestowed a sacred legacy upon the ensuing patrician generations that re- 

enact and renew the rite. 

The "heroes" or demigods to whom the higher castes and the noble families of 

traditional antiquity traced their lineage were beings who at death (unlike most people 

or unlike those who had been defeated in the trials of the afterlife) did not emanate 

a "shadow" or the larva of an ego that was eventually destined to die anyway; in- 

stead, they were beings who had achieved the self-subsistent, transcendent, and in- 

corruptible life of a "god." They were those who "had overcome the second death." 

This was possible because they had more or less directly imposed upon their own 

vital force that change of nature I mentioned before when talking about the transcen- 

dent meaning of "sacrifice." Ancient Egyptian traditions clearly articulated the task 

of creating out of the ka (another name for the "double" or the "demon") some kind 

of new incorruptible body (sahu) that was supposed to replace the physical body and 

"stand on its own feet" in the invisible dimension. In other traditions it is possible to 

find the identical concept under the names of "immortal body," "body of glory," or 

"resurrection body." Therefore, if in their traditions the Greeks of Homer's time (as 

in the first Aryan period when the Vedas were written) did not contemplate the 

survival of the soul alone, but instead, believed the survivors (those who had been 

"kidnapped" or "made invisible" by the gods and who had settled in the "island of 

the blessed," where there is no death) retained soul and body in an indissoluble 

unity, this should not be understood as a coarse materialistic representation, as many 

historians of religion today are inclined to believe, but as the symbolic expression of 

the idea of an "immortal body" and the condition for immortality; this idea enjoyed 

its classical formulation in Far Eastern esotericism, and more specifically, in opera- 

tive Taoism. The Egyptian sahu, created by the rite, thanks to which the deceased 

can go on to live in the company of solar gods, indicates a body that has achieved a 

high degree of knowledge, power, and glory and that has thus become everlasting 

and incorruptible. This body is referred to in the following formulation: "Your soul 

lives, your body germinates eternally at Ra's command without any diminution or 

defect, just like Ra's." In this context the attainment of immortality or the victory 

over adverse powers of dissolution is related to wholeness, namely, to the insepara- 

bility of the soul from the body — better yet, from a body that does not undergo decay. 

There is a very suggestive Vedic formula: "Leaving behind every fault, go back 

home. Filled with splendor, be reunited with your body." The Christian dogma of 

the "resurrection of the flesh" that will take place on Judgment Day is the last echo 

of this idea, which can be traced back to prehistoric times.  

In these instances death did not represent an end but a fulfillment. It was a 

"triumphal death" bestowing immortality and was the reason why in some Hellenic 

traditions the deceased was called "hero" and dying was called "generating demi- 

gods" (ΗΡΩΑ ΓΙΝΕΣΘΑΙ); or why the deceased was portrayed wearing a crown (often 

put on his head by the goddesses of victory) made with the same myrtle that identi- 

fied those who were going to be initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries; or why in the 

Catholic liturgical language the day of death is called dies natalis (day of birth); or 

why in Egypt the tombs of the deceased who had been dedicated to Osiris were 

called "houses of immortality," and the afterlife was conceived as "the land of tri- 

umph"; or why in ancient Rome the emperor's "demon" was worshiped as divine, 

and why the kings, legislators, victorious generals, and founders of those institutions 

or traditions that were believed to involve an action and a conquest beyond nature 

were worshiped as heroes, demigods, gods, and avatars of different deities. The 

sacred foundation of the authority the elders enjoyed in several ancient civilizations 

lies in similar ideas. People saw in the elders, who were closer to death, the manifes- 

tation of the divine force that was thought to achieve its full liberation at death.' 

Thus, as far as the destiny of the soul after death is concerned, there are two 

opposite paths. The first is the "path of the gods," also known as the "solar path" or 

Zeus's path, which leads to the bright dwelling of the immortals. This dwelling was 

variously represented as a height, heaven, or an island, from the Nordic Valhalla 

and Asgard to the Aztec-Inca "House of the Sun" that was reserved for kings, he- 

roes, and nobles. The other path is that trodden by those who do not survive in a real 

way, and who slowly yet inexorably dissolve back into their original stocks, into the 

"totems" that unlike single individuals, never die; this is the life of Hades, of the 

"infernals," of Niflheim, of the chthonic deities. This teaching is found in the Hindu 

tradition where the expressions deva-yana and pitr-yana signify "path of the gods," 

and "path of the ancestors" (in the sense of manes), respectively. It is also said: 

"These two paths, one bright and the other dark, are considered eternal in the uni- 

verse. In the former, man goes out and then comes back; in the latter he keeps on 

returning." The first path "leading to Brahman," namely, to the unconditioned state, 

is analogically associated with fire, light, the day, and the six months of the solar 

ascent during the year; it leads to the region of thunderbolts, located beyond the 

"door of the sun." The second path, which is related to smoke, night, and the six 

months of the sun's descent leads to the moon, which is the symbol of the principle of 

change and becoming and which is manifested here as the principle regulating the 

cycle of finite beings who continuously come and go in many ephemeral incarna- 

tions of the ancestral forces. 7 According to an interesting symbolism, those who 

follow the lunar path become the food of the manes and are "sacrificed" again by 

them in the semen of new mortal births. According to another significant symbol 

found in the Greek tradition, those who have not been initiated, that is to say, the 

majority of people, are condemned in Hades to do the Danaides' work; carrying 

water in amphorae filled with holes and pouring it into bottomless barrels, thus never 

being able to fill them up; this illustrates the insignificance of their ephemeral lives, 

which keep recurring over and over again, pointlessiy. Another comparable Greek 

symbol is Ocnus, who plaited a rope on the Plains of Lethe. This rope was continu- 

ally eaten by an ass. Ocnus symbolizes man's activity, while the ass traditionally 

embodies the "demonic" power; in Egypt the ass was associated with the snake of 

darkness and with Am-mit, the "devourer of the dead." 

In this context we again find the basic ideas concerning the "two natures" that I 

discussed in the first chapter. But here it is possible to penetrate deeper into the 

meaning of the existence in antiquity not only of two types of divinities, (the former 

Uranian and solar, the latter telluric and lunar), but also of the existence of two 

essentially distinct types (at times even opposed to each other) of rite and cult. A 

civilization's degree of faithfulness to Tradition is determined by the degree of the 

predominance of cults and rituals of the first type over those of the second type. 

Likewise, the nature and the function of the rites proper to the world of "spiritual 

virility" is specified. 

A characteristic of what today goes by the name of the "science of religions is 

that whenever by sheer chance it finds the right key to solve a "mystery," it reaches 

the conclusion that this key is good to solve all mysteries. Thus, when some scholars 

learned about the idea of the totem, they began to see totems everywhere. The "to- 

temic" interpretation was shamelessly applied to the forms found in great civiliza- 

tions, since some scholars thought that the best explanation for them could be de- 

rived from earlier studies on primitive tribes. Last but not least, a sexual theory of the 

totem eventually came to be formulated. 

I will not say that the shift from the totems of those primitive populations to a 

traditional regality was a historical development; at most, it was an evolution in an 

ideal sense. A regal or an aristocratic tradition arises wherever there is dominion over 

me totems and not dominion of' the totems, and wherever the bond is inverted and the 

deep forces of the stock are given a superbiological orientation by a supernatural prin- 

ciple in the direction of an Olympian "victory" and immortality. To establish ambigu- 

us promiscuities that make individuals more vulnerable to the powers on which they 

depend as natural beings, thus allowing the center of their being to fall deeper and 

deeper into the collective and into the prepersonal dimensions and to "placate" or to 

propitiate certain infernal influences, granting them their wish to become incarnated 

in the souls and in the world of men — this is the essence of an inferior cult that is only 

an extension of the way of being of those who have no cult and no rite at all. In other 

words, it is the characteristic of the extreme degeneration of higher traditional forms. 

To free human beings from the dominion of the totems; to strengthen them; to address 

them to the fulfillment of a spiritual form and a limit; and to bring them in an invisible 

way to the line of influences capable of creating a destiny of heroic and liberating 

immortality — this was the task of the aristocratic cult. 1 ' When human beings perse- 

vered in this cult, the fate of Hades was averted and the "way of the Mother" was 

barred. Once the divine rites were neglected, however, this destiny was reconfirmed 

and the power of the inferior nature became omnipotent again. In this way, the mean- 

ing of the abovementioned Oriental teaching is made manifest, namely, that those 

who neglect the rites cannot escape "hell," this word meaning both a way of being in 

this life and a destiny in the next. In its deepest sense, the duty to preserve, nourish, 

and develop the mystical fire (which was considered to be the body of the god of the 

families, cities, and empires, as well as, according to a Vedic expression, the ''custo- 

dian of immortality" 10 ) without any interruption concealed the ritual promise to 

preserve, nourish, and develop the principle of a higher destiny and contact with 

the overwork! that were created by the ancestor. In this way this fire is most inti- 

mately related to the fire, which especially in the Hindu and in the Greek view and, 

more generally speaking, in the Olympian-Aryan ritual of cremation, bums in the fu- 

neral pyre; this fire was the symbol of the power that consumes the last remains of the 

earthly nature of die deceased until it generates beyond it the "fulgurating form" of an 

immortal.  

=====================================================

Life and Death of Civilizations

In those areas in which Tradition retained all of its vitality the dynastic succession 

of sacred kings represented an axis of light and of eternity within the temporal 

framework, the victorious presence of the supernatural in the world, and the "Olym- 

pian" component that transfigures the demonic element of chaos and bestows a higher 

meaning to state, nation, and race. Even in the lower strata of society, the hierarchi- 

cal bond created by a conscious and virile devotion was considered a means to ap- 

proach, and to participate in, the supernatural. 

In fact, invested with authority from above, the simple law acted as a reference 

and a support that went beyond mere human individuality for those who could not 

light the supernatural fire for themselves. In reality, the intimate, free, and effective 

dedication of one 's entire life to traditional norms, even when a full understanding of 

their inner dimension was not present to justify such an adherence, was enough to 

acquire objectively a higher meaning: through obedience, faithfulness, and action in 

conformity with traditional principles and limitations an invisible force shaped such 

a life and oriented it toward that supernatural axis that in others (in those privileged 

few at the top of the hierarchy) existed as a state of truth, realization, and light. In 

this manner, a stable and lively organism was formed that was constantly oriented 

toward the overworld and sanctified in power and in act according to its hierarchical 

degrees in the various domains of thinking, feeling, acting, and struggling. Such was 

the climate of the world of Tradition. 

All of the exterior life was a rite, namely, an approximation, more or 

less efficacious and depending on individuals and groups, to a truth that 

the exterior life cannot produce by itself, but that allows a person to 

realize one's self in part or entirely, provided it is lived in a saintly 

way, These people lived the same life that they led for centuries; they 

made of this world a ladder in order to achieve liberation. These peoples 

used to think, to act, to love, to hate, and to wage war on each other in 

a saintly way; they had erected the one temple among a great number 

of other temples through which the stream of the waters ran. This temple 

was the bed of the river, the traditional truth, the holy syllable in the 

heart of the world. 

At this level to leave the parameters of Tradition meant to leave the true life. To 

abandon the rites, alter or violate the laws or mix the castes corresponded to a re- 

gression from a structured universe (cosmos) back into chaos, or to a relapse to the 

state of being under the power of the elements and of the totems — to take the "path 

leading to the hells" where death is the ultimate reality and where a destiny of con- 

tingency and of dissolution is the supreme rule. 

This applied to both single individuals and to entire peoples. Any analysis of 

history will reveal that just like man, civilizations too, after a dawn and an ensuing 

development, eventually decline and die. Some people have attempted to discover 

the Jaw responsible for the decline of various civilizations. I do not think that the 

cause or causes can be reduced to merely historical and naturalistic factors. 

Among various writers, de Gobineau is the one who probably better demon- 

strates the insufficiency of the majority of the empirical causes that have been ad- 

duced to explain the decline of great civilizations. He showed, for instance, that a 

civilization does not collapse simply because its political power has been either bro- 

ken or swept away: "The same type of civilization sometimes endures even under a 

foreign occupation and defies the worst catastrophic events, while some other times, 

in the presence of mediocre mishaps, it just disappears." Not even the quality of the 

governments, in the empirical (namely, administrative and organizational) sense of 

the word, exercises much influence on the longevity of civilizations. De Gobineau 

remarked that civilizations, just like living organisms, may survive for a long time 

even though they cany within themselves disorganizing tendencies in addition to the 

spiritual unity that is the life of the one common Tradition; India and feudal Europe, 

for example, show precisely the absence of both a unitary organization and a single 

economic system or form of legislation on the one hand and a marked pluralism with 

repeatedly recurring antagonisms on the other.  

Not even the so-called corruption of morals, in its most profane and moralisti- 

cally bourgeois sense, may be considered the cause of the collapse of civilizations, 

the corruption of morals at most may be an effect, but it is not the real cause. In 

almost every instance we have to agree with Nietzsche, who claimed that wherever 

the preoccupation with "morals" arises is an indication that a process of decadence is 

already at work; the mos of Vice's "heroic ages" has nothing to do with moralistic 

limitations. The Far Eastern tradition especially has emphasized the idea that morals 

and laws in general (in a conformist and social sense) arise where "virtue" and the 

"Way'' are no longer known: 

When the Tao was lost, its attributes appeared; when its attributes were 

lost, benevolence appeared; when benevolence was lost, righteousness 

appeared; and when righteousness was lost, the proprieties appeared. 

Now propriety is the attenuated form of filial piety and good faith, and 

is also the commencement of disorder.  

As far as the traditional laws are concerned, taken in their sacred character and in 

their transcendent finality, then just as they had a nonhuman value, likewise they 

could not be reduced in any way to the domain of morality in the current sense of the 

word. Antagonism between peoples or a state of war between them is in itself not the 

cause of a civilization's collapse; on the contrary, the imminent sense of danger, just 

like victory, can consolidate, even in a material way, the network of a unitary struc- 

ture and heat up a people's spirit through external manifestations, while peace and 

well-being may lead to a state of reduced tension that favors the action of the deeper 

causes of a possible disintegration.  

The idea that is sometimes upheld against the insufficiency of these explana- 

tions is that of race. The unity and the purity of blood are believed by some to be the 

foundation of life and the strength of a civilization; therefore, the mixing and the 

ensuing "poisoning' 1 of the blood are considered the initial cause of a civilization's 

decline. This too is an illusion, which among other things, lowers the notion of civili- 

zation to a naturalistic and biological plane, since this is the plane on which race is 

thought of in our day and age, Race, blood, hereditary purity of blood: these are 

merely "material" factors. A civilization in the true, traditional sense of the word 

arises only when a supernatural and nonhuman force of a higher order — a force that 

corresponds to the "pontifical" function, to the component of the rite, and to the 

principle of spirituality as the basis of a hierarchical differentiation of people — acts 

upon these factors. At the origin of every true civilization there lies a "divine" event 

(every great civilization has its own myth concerning divine founders): thus, no hu- 

man or naturalistic factor can fully account for it. The adulteration and decline of 

civilizations is caused by an event of the same order, though it acts in the opposite, 

degenerative sense. When a race has lost contact with the only thing that has and can 

provide stability, namely, with the world of "Being"; and when in a race that which 

forms its most subtle yet most essential element has been lost, namely, the inner race 

and the race of the spirit — compared to which the race of the body and of the soul are 

only external manifestations and means of expression*— then the collective organisms 

 that a race has generated, no matter how great and powerful, are destined 

to descend into the world of contingency; they are at the mercy of what is irra- 

tional, becoming, and "historical," and of what is shaped "from below" and from the 

outside. 

Blood and ethnic purity are factors that are valued in traditional civilizations 

too; their value, however, never justifies the employment, in the case of human beings, 

 of the same criteria employed to ascertain the presence of "pure blood" in a dog 

or in a horse — as is the case in some modern racist ideologies. The "blood" or "ra- 

cial" factor plays a certain role not because it exists in the "psyche" (in the brain and 

in the opinions of an individual), but in the deepest forces of life that various tradi- 

tions experience and act upon as typical formative energies. The blood registers the 

effects of this action, yet it provides through heredity a material that is preformed 

and refined so that through several generations, realizations similar to the original 

ones may be prepared and developed in a natural and spontaneous way. It is on this 

foundation — and on this foundation only — that, as we shall see, the traditional world 

often practiced the heredity of the castes and willed endogamous laws. If we refer, 

however, to the Indo-Aryan tradition in which the caste system was the most rigor- 

ously applied, simply to be born in a caste, though necessary, was not considered 

enough; it was necessary for the quality virtually conferred upon a person at birth to 

be actualized by initiation. I have already mentioned that according to the 

Manudharma sastra unless a man undergoes initiation or "second birth," even though 

he may be an Aryan, he is not superior to a sudra. I also related how three special 

differentiations of the divine fire animated the three hierarchically higher Persian 

pishtra, and that definite membership in one of them was sealed at the moment of 

initiation. Even in these instances we should not lose sight of two factors being present, 

and never mistake the formative element for the element that is formed, nor the 

conditioning for the conditioned factor. Both the higher castes and traditional aristoc- 

racies, as well as superior civilizations and races (those that enjoy the same status 

that the consecrated castes enjoy vis-a-vis the plebeian castes of the "children of the 

Earth") cannot be explained by blood, but through the blood, by something that goes 

beyond blood and that has a metabiological character. 

When this "something" is truly powerful, or when it constitutes the deeper and 

most stable nucleus of a traditional civilization, then that civilization can preserve 

and reaffirm itself — even when ethnical mixtures and alterations occur (no matter 

how destructive they may be)— by reacting on the heterogeneous elements, and 

shaping them, by reducing them slowly but gradually to their own type, or by regen- 

erating itself into a new, vibrant unity. In historical times there are a number of cases 

of this: China, Greece, Rome, Islam. Only when a civilization's generating root "from 

above" is no longer alive and its "spiritual race" is worn out or broken does its de- 

cline set in, and this in tandem with its secularization and humanization/' 

When it comes to this point, the only forces that can be relied upon are those of 

the blood, which still carries atavistically within itself, Through race and instinct, the 

echo and the trace of the departed higher element that has been lost; it is only in this 

way that the "racist 51 thesis in defense of the purity of blood can be validly upheld — 

if not to prevent, at least to delay the fatal outcome of the process of dissolution. It is 

impossible, however, to really prevent this outcome without an inner awakening. 

Analogous observations can be made concerning the value and the power of 

traditional forms, principles, and laws. In a traditional social order there must be 

somebody in whom the principle upon which various institutions, legislations, and 

ethical and ritual regulations are based is truly active; this principle, though, must be 

an objective spiritual realization and not a simulacrum. In other words, what is re- 

quired is an individual or an elite to assume the "pontifical" function of lords and 

mediators of power from above. Then even those who can only obey but who cannot 

adopt the law other than by complying with the external authority and tradition are 

able intuitively to know why they must obey; their obedience is not sterile because it 

allows them to participate effectively in the power and in the light. Just as when a 

magnetic current is present in a main circuit and induced currents are produced in 

other distinct circuits, provided they are syntonically arranged — likewise, some of 

the greatness, stability, and "fortune 11 that are found in the hierarchical apex pass 

invisibly into those who follow the mere form and the ritual with a pure heart. In that 

case, the tradition is firmly rooted, the social organism is unified and connected in all 

of its parts by an occult bond that is generally stronger than external contingencies. 

When at the center, however, there is only a shallow function or when the titles 

of the representatives of the spiritual and regal authority are only nominal, then the 

pinnacle dissolves and the support crumbles. A highly significant legend in this re- 

gard is that of the people of Gog and Magog, who symbolize chaotic and demonic 

forces that are held back by traditional structures. According to this legend, these 

people attack when they realize that there is no longer anybody blowing the trum- 

pets on that wall upon which an imperial type had previously arrested their siege, 

and that it was only the wind that produced the sounds they were hearing. Rites, 

institutions, laws, and customs may still continue to exist for a certain time; but with 

their meaning lost and their "virtue" paralyzed they are nothing but empty shells. 

Once they are abandoned to themselves and have become secularized, they crumble 

like parched clay and become increasingly disfigured and altered, despite all at- 

tempts to retain from the outside, whether through violence or imposition, the lost 

inner unity. As long as a shadow of the action of the superior element remains, how- 

ever, and an echo of it exists in the blood, the structure remains standing, the body 

still appears endowed with a soul, and the corpse — to use an image employed by 

de Gobineau— walks and is still capable of knocking down obstacles in its path. 

When the last residue of the force from above and of the race of the spirit is ex- 

hausted, in the new generations nothing else remains; there is no longer a riverbed to 

channel the current that is now dispersed in every direction. What emerges at this 

point is individualism, chaos, anarchy, a humanist hubris, and degeneration in every 

domain. The dam is broken. Although a semblance of ancient grandeur still remains, 

the smallest impact is enough to make an empire or state collapse and be replaced 

with a demonic inversion, namely, with the modern, omnipotent Leviathan, which is 

a mechanized and "totalitarian" collective system. 

From prehistoric times to our own day and age this is what "evolution" has been 

all about. As we shall see, from the distant myth of divine regality through the 

descent from one caste to the next, mankind will reach the faceless forms of our 

contemporary civilization in which the tyranny of the pure demos and the world of 

the masses is increasingly and frightfully reawakening in the structures of mechani- 

zation. 

===================================================

Initiation and Consecration

Having defined the essence of both the pinnacle and center of a traditional civi- 

lization, it is necessary to describe briefly some of its external features that 

refer to already conditioned existential situations. This will enable me to indicate the 

origin of the first alteration of the world of Tradition. 

The regal idea occurs in an already weakened form when it no longer becomes 

incarnated in beings who are naturally above human limitations, but rather in beings 

who must develop this quality within themselves. In the ancient Hellenic tradition, 

such a distinction corresponded analogically to that between a "god' 1 (Olympian 

ideal) and a "hero." In terms of the Roman tradition this distinction was formally 

sanctioned through the titles of deus and divus, the latter always designating a man 

who had become a god, the former designating a being who had always been a god. 

According to tradition, in Egypt the regal race of the ΘΕΟΙ was replaced by that of the 

ΗΜΙΘΕΟΙ(who correspond to the "heroes"), who in turn precede in time the race of 

the ΝΕΚΥΕΣ, an expression subject to being referred mainly to human leaders. What 

emerges in this context is a situation in which there is a certain distance between the 

person and the function being exercised: in order for a person to embody a certain 

function what is required is a specific action capable of producing in him a new 

quality; this action may appear either in the form of an initiation or of an investiture 

(or consecration). In the first case this action has a relatively autonomous and direct 

character; in the second ease it is mediated, or it takes place from the outside through 

a priestly caste distinct from the regal caste. 

As far as the regal initiation is concerned, it will suffice to repeat what has been 

said about the ritual, sacrificial, and triumphal actions that reenact those deeds at- 

tributed to a god or a hero with the intent of actualizing, evoking, or renewing the 

corresponding supernatural influences. This occurred in a very specific way in an- 

cient Egypt. As I have said, the king at his enthronement reenacted the "sacrifice" 

that made Osiris a transcendent divinity; this rite was used not only as a way to 

renew the quality of a nature that was already divine by birth, but also and foremost 

as an initiation aimed at arousing the dimension of transcendence in the man who 

was destined to be king and at granting him "the gift of life." As far as the details of 

similar rites are concerned, Ι will limit myself to describing the rite that in the 

Eleusinian Mysteries corresponded to the bestowal of the regal title. 

The future "king" first spends some time in solitary confinement. Then he must 

swim across a river through blood and vortices — in other words, he crosses the "stream 

of generation" by means of his own strength, leaving behind on the riverbank his old 

body, soul, and personality. The river is later crossed again by boat, and the king 

wears animal skins. These skins apparently signified totemic powers that emerged 

as a consequence of the suspension of the ephemeral, external I, powers that also 

represented the powers of the community; this symbolism was meant to establish a 

contact and an identification with the supernatural dimension. In the Bacchic ritual, 

after devouring the victims the Corybantes wore their skins; this was meant as an 

identification with the god represented by the sacrificial victims and as the act of 

taking on his strength and nature; the Egyptian initiate too wore the skin of a victim 

representing Set. Thus, the overall symbolism of the new phase of the ritual probably 

refers to the achievement of a state in which one can undertake the symbolic cross- 

ing, thanks to which he will be qualified to become the leader, even after assuming 

certain powers related to the subterranean and vital dimension of the collective or- 

ganism. 

The future "king" eventually reaches the other bank of the river and now must 

climb to the top of a mountain. Darkness surrounds him, but the gods help him to 

climb the path and to rise several levels. We notice here a recurrence of well-known 

symbols: the dry land or island, the mountain or the height. Moreover, we find the 

idea of planetary influences (the "rings" may correspond to the Platonic seven "wheels 

of destiny") that one must overcome by climbing all the way to the symbolic region 

of the fixed stars, which represent the states of the pure world of being. This corre- 

sponds to the passage from the Lesser to the Greater Mysteries and to the old distinc- 

tion between the lunar and telluric rite and the solar and Olympian rite. The person 

who is to be initiated is welcomed by other kings and by the highest dignitaries; he 

walks into an illuminated temple in order to establish contact with the divine; he is 

reminded to fulfill the main duties of a king; he finally receives the robes and the 

insignia of his dignity and sits on the throne. 

In Egypt, the rite of regal initiation included three separate moments correspond- 

ing to the abovementioned phases; first came a purification; then the rite of the re- 

ception of the supernatural fluid symbolized by the crown (uraeus) or by the double 

crown (the crown was often called the "great sorceress," who "establishes at the 

right and at the left hand of the king the gods of eternity and of stability"); and 

finally, the "ascent" to the temple representing the "otherworld'' (paduat) and the 

"embrace" of the solar god, which was the definitive consecration that sanctified this 

new immortalizing birth and his divine nature and by virtue of which the Egyptian 

king appeared as the "son" of the same god. 

The Eleusinian rite is one of the most complete rites of "regal" initiation; allegedly 

 each of the symbols employed therein corresponded to a particular inner expe- 

rience. Though at this time I do not intend to describe the means through which 

similar experiences were induced or what they were all about, I wish to emphasize 

that in the world of Tradition, initiation in its highest forms was conceived as an 

intensely real operation that was capable of changing the ontological status of the 

individual and of grafting onto him certain forces of the world of Being, or of the 

overworld. The title of rex (in Greek, ΒΑΣΙΛΕΥΣ) at Eleusis testified to the acquired 

supernatural dimension that potentially qualified the function of the leader. The fact 

that at the time of the Eleusinian Mysteries this title certainly did not go together 

with effective political authority was due to the decadence of ancient Hellas. Be- 

cause of this decadence, the ancient regal dignity was retained on a different plane 

than that of royal power, which by then had fallen into profane hands. This did not 

prevent temporal sovereigns in ancient times, however, from aspiring to achieve the 

dignity of an initiatory king, which was very different from the dignity that they 

actually enjoyed. Thus, for instance, when Hadrian and Antoninus were already 

Roman emperors, they received the title of "king" only after being initiated at Eleusis. 

According to concordant testimonies, the quality bestowed by initiation is distinct 

from and unrelated to any human merit: all of the human virtues combined could not 

produce this quality, just as, to a certain extent, no human "sin" could affect it. An 

echo of this notion was preserved in the Catholic view according to which the priestly 

dignity, which is transmitted sacramentally, cannot be effaced by any moral sin com- 

mitted by the person endowed with it, since it remains in that person as an indoles 

indelebilis, an "indelible mark" ("You are a priest forever," Ps. 1 10:4). Moreover, as 

in τηe case of the Mazdean notion of "glory" and of the Chinese notion of "virtue," 

the priestly dignity corresponded to an objective power. In ancient China a distinc- 

tion was made between those who were naturally endowed with "knowledge" and 

"virtue" (those who are capable of "fulfilling Heaven's law with calm and imper- 

turbability and no help from the outside" are at the pinnacle, and are "perfected" and 

"transcendent" men) and those who achieved them "by disciplining themselves and 

by returning to the rites."' The discipline (sieu-ki) that is suitable to the latter men 

and that is the equivalent of initiation was considered only as a means to the real 

creation of that "superior man" (kiun-tze) who could legitimately assume the func- 

tion proper to the supreme hierarchical apex by virtue of the mysterious and real 

power inherent in him. The distinctive feature of what makes one a king is more 

evident when a consecration rather than an initiation occurs; for instance, only the 

characteristic special investiture that turns the already crowned Teutonic prince into 

the romanorum rex can bestow upon him the authority and die title of leader of the 

Holy Roman Empire. Plato wrote: "In Egypt no king is allowed to rule without be- 

longing to the priestly class; if by any chance a king of another race rises to power 

through violence, he eventually needs to be initiated into this class." 7 

Likewise, Plutarch wrote that "A king chosen from among the warriors instantly 

became a priest and shared in the philosophy that is hidden for the most part in myths 

and stories that show dim reflections and insights of the truth." The same was true 

for the Parsis; it was precisely because the Persian Great Kings were elevated to the 

dignity of "magi" at the time of their enthronement and thus reunited the two powers 

that Iran did not experience conflicts or antagonisms between royalty and priesthood 

during the better period of its tradition. At the same time it must be noted that tradi- 

tionally, while those who had received the initiation were kings, the opposite was 

also true, namely, the fact that often the initiation and the priestly function itself 

were considered a prerogative of Icings and of aristocratic castes. For instance, in 

the Homeric Hymn to Demeter (verse 270 ff.), the goddess allegedly restricted to 

the four Eleusinian princes and to their descendants the "celebration of the cult 

and the knowledge of sacred orgies," by virtue of which "at death one does not incur 

the same fate as others." Ancient Rome struggled for a long time against the plebe- 

ian prevarication, and insisted that the priests of the higher collegia and especially 

the consuls (who originally enjoyed a sacred character themselves) were to be 

chosen only from patrician families. In this context, the need for a unitary authority 

was affirmed together with the instinctive acknowledgment that such an authority 

las a stronger foundation in those cases in which the race of the blood and the race of 

the spirit converge. 

Let us now examine the case of kings who have not been raised to a superindi- 

vidual dignity through initiation but rather through an investiture or a consecration 

that is mediated by a priestly caste; this form is typical of more recent, historical 

times. The primordial theocracies did not derive their authority from a church or 

from a priestly caste. The Nordic kings were kings immediately by virtue of their 

divine origin, and just like the kings of the Doric-Achaean period, they were the only 

celebrants of sacrificial actions. In China the emperor received his mandate directly 

"from heaven." Until recently in Japan, the ritual of enthronement took place in the 

context of the individual spiritual experience of the emperor, who established con- 

tact with the influences of the regal tradition without the presence of an officiating 

clergy. Even in Greece and in Rome the priestly collegia did not "make" kings through 

their rites, but limited themselves to exercising the divinatory science in order to 

ascertain whether the person appointed to exercise the regal function "was found 

pleasing to the gods"; in other words, it was an issue of acknowledgment and not of 

investiture, as in the ancient Scottish tradition concerning the so-called Stone of 

Destiny. Conversely, at the origins of Rome the priesthood was conceived as some 

kind of emanation of the primitive regality and the king himself promulgated the 

laws regulating the cult. After Romulus, who was himself initiated to the divinatory 

art, Numa delegated the typically priestly functions to the collegium of the flamines, 

which he himself instituted; 9 at the time of the empire, the priestly body was again 

subjected to the authority of the Caesars, just like the Christian clergy later became 

subjected to the Byzantine emperor. In Egypt, until the Twenty-first Dynasty, the 

king delegated a priest (designated as "the king's priest," nutir hon) to perform the 

rites only sporadically, and the spiritual authority itself always represented a reflec- 

tion of the royal authority. The paleo-Egyptian nutir hon parallels the role often 

played in India by the purohita, who was a brahman a employed at court and in 

charge of performing fire sacrifices. The Germanic races ignored consecration up to 

the Carolingian era; Charlemagne crowned himself, and so did Ludovicus and Pius, 

who later crowned his own son, Lothar, without any direct involvement on the part of 

the pope. The same holds true for the earlier forms of all traditional civilization, 

including the historical cycles of pre-Colombian America, and especially for the 

Peruvian dynasty of the "solar masters" or Incas. 

On the contrary, when a priestly caste or a church claims to be the exclusive 

holder of that sacred force that alone can empower the king to exercise his function, 

this marks the beginning of an involutive process. A spirituality that in and of itself is 

not regal, and conversely, a regality that is not spiritual, eventually emerged; this 

spirituality and this regality enjoyed separate existences. Also, a "feminine" spiritu- 

ality and a material virility began to coexist jointly with a lunar "sacredness" and a 

material "solarity." The original synthesis, which corresponded to the primordial 

regal attribute of the "glory" or of the celestial "fire" of the "conquerors," was dis- 

solved and the plane of absolute centrality was lost. We shall see later on that such a 

split marks the beginning of the descent of civilizations in the direction that has led to 

the genesis of the modern world. 

Once the fracture occurred, the priestly caste portrayed itself as the caste in 

charge of attracting and transmitting spiritual influences, but without being capable 

of constituting their dominating center within the temporal order. This dominating 

center, instead, was virtually present in the quality of a warrior or a nobleman of the 

king to whom the rite of consecration communicated these influences (the "Holy 

Spirit" in the Catholic tradition) so that he may assume them and actualize them in 

an efficient form. Thus, in more recent times it is only through this priestly mediation 

and through a rite's virtus deificans that the synthesis of the regal and priestly dimen- 

sions is reconstituted, a synthesis that is supposed to be the supreme hierarchical 

peak of a traditional social order. It is only in this way that the king again can be 

something more than a mere mortal. 

Likewise, in the Catholic ritual the dress a king was supposed to wear before the 

rite of the investiture was simply a "military" dress; it is only in later times that a king 

began to wear the "regal dress" during the ceremony and began the tradition of 

sitting on an "elevated place" that had been reserved for him in the church. The 

rigorously symbolical meaning of the various phases of the ceremony has been pre- 

served almost up to modem times. It is significant to find in older times the recurrent 

use of the expression "regal religion," for which the enigmatic figure of Melchizedek 

was often evoked; already in the Merovingian era in reference to the king we find 

the formula: "Melchizedek noster, merito rex atque sacerdos. "The king, who during 

the rite took off the dress that he previously put on, was believed to be one who 

"leaves the mundane state in order to assume the state of regal religion" In a.d. 769 

Pope Stephanus III reminded the Carolingians that they were a sacred race and a 

royal priesthood: "Vos gens sancta estis, atque regales estis sacerdotium. " Regal 

consecration was bestowed through anointing; back in those times this rite differed 

from the rite of consecration of bishops only in a few minor details, and therefore the 

king became as holy as a priest before men and God. Anointing, which belonged to 

the Jewish tradition and which was eventually taken up again by Catholicism, was 

the habitual rite employed to transfer a being from a profane into a sacred world;

according to the Ghibelline ideal it was thanks to his virtue that the consecrated 

person became a dens-homo, in spiritu et virtute Christus dominu in una eminentia 

divinificationis — summus et instructor sanctae ecclesine. Therefore it was said that 

"the king must stand out from the mass of lay people, since he participates in the 

priestly function by his having been anointed by consecrated oil." The anonymous 

author of York wrote: "The king, the Christ [anointed] of the Lord, cannot be re- 

garded as being a layman." In the sporadic emergence of the idea that the rite of 

regal consecration has the power to erase every sin committed, including those that 

involved the shedding of blood, we find an echo of the abovementioned initiatory 

doctrine concerning the transcendence of the supernatural quality vis-a-vis any hu- 

man virtue or sin. 

In this chapter I have discussed initiation in relation to the positive function of 

regality, even when considered in material terms. I have also mentioned instances in 

which the initiatory dignity separated itself from that function, or better, instances in 

which that function separated itself from the initiatory dignity by becoming secular- 

ized and by taking on a merely warrior or political character. Initiation must also be 

considered, however, as an independent category of the world of Tradition without a 

necessary relation to the exercise of a visible function at the center of a society. 

Initiation (high-level initiation, not to be confused with initiation that is related to the 

regimen of the castes or to the traditional professions and the various artisan guilds) 

has defined, in and of itself, the action that determines an ontological transformation 

of man. High-level initiation has generated initiatory chains that were often invisible 

and subterranean and that preserved an identical spiritual influence and an "inner 

doctrine" superior to the exoteric and religious forms of a historical tradition. 11 There 

are even instances in which the initiate has enjoyed this distinct character in a nor- 

mal civilization and not only during the ensuing period of degeneration and inner 

fracture of the traditional unity. This character has become necessary and all-perva- 

sive, especially in Europe in these latter times because of the involutive processes 

that have led both to the organization of the modern world and to the advent of 

Christianity (hence the merely initiatory character of the hermetic rex, of the 

Rosicrucian emperor, and so on). 

====================================================

On the Hierarchical Relationship 

Between Royalty and Priesthood 

If on the one hand the original synthesis of the two powers is reestablished in the 

person of the consecrated king, on the other hand, the nature of the hierarchical 

relationships existing in every normal social order between royalty and priestly caste 

or church, which is merely the mediator of supernatural influences, is very clearly 

defined: regality enjoys primacy over the priesthood, just as, symbolically speaking, 

he sun has primacy over the moon and the man over the woman. In a certain sense 

this is the same primacy over Abraham's priesthood that was traditionally attributed 

to the priestly regality of Melchizedek, who performed sacrifices in the name of the 

Almighty, the God of Victory ("God Most High who delivered your foes into your 

hand," Gen. 14:20). As I have said, the medieval apologists of the Ghibelline ideal 

occasionally referred to the symbol of Melchizedek when laying claim, over and 

against the Church, to the privileges and to the supernatural dignity of the monarchy. 

When referring to thoroughly traditional civilizations, it is helpful to employ Aryan 

or Indo-Aryan texts in order to emphasize that even in a civilization that appears to 

be characterized mainly by the priestly caste, the notion of the correct relationship 

between the two dignities was preserved to a large extent. In these texts, which I 

have previously quoted, it is said that the stock of the warrior deities arose from Brah- 

man as a higher and more perfect form than Brahman itself. Reading on: 'This is 

why nothing is greater than the warrior nobility (ksatram); the priests (brahmana) 

themselves venerate the warrior when the consecration of the king occurs. 

In the same text, the priestly caste that was assimilated to that Brahman (under- 

stood here in an impersonal manner and in an analogous sense to what in Christian- 

ity is considered to be the power, or dynamis, of the Holy Spirit), which is in its 

safekeeping, was represented as a mother or as a maternal matrix (yoni) in relation 

to the warrior or regal caste. This is particularly meaningful. The regal type is pre- 

sented here according to its value as male principle, which surpasses, individuates, 

masters, and rules "triumphantly" over the spiritual force, which is conceived of as a 

mother and as a female. Reference was made to ancient traditions concerning a type 

of regality that was attained by marrying a divine woman, often portrayed as a mother 

(this symbolizes incest, whereby the Egyptian king, in a broader context, was given 

the title of 'Iris mother's bull"). We are led again to the same point. Therefore, even 

when the rite of investiture is considered necessary, this does not establish or ac- 

knowledge the subordination of the king per se to the priestly caste. After the race of 

beings who are by nature more than mere human beings became extinct, a king was, 

prior to his consecration, simply a "warrior, provided that he did individually rise to 

something higher through other means. But in the rite of consecration the king, 

rather than receiving, assumes a power that the priestly class does not own but rather 

has in custody; this power is then supposed to rise to a "higher form" that it did not 

possess before. Also, in consecration the virile and warrior quality of the person to be 

initiated frees itself and rises to a higher plane; it then acts as an axis or as a pole of 

the sacred force. This is why the officiating priest must "worship" the king whom he 

consecrates, although the latter, according to a text, owes to the brahmana the re- 

spect owed to a mother. In the Manudharma sastra itself, although the primacy of the 

brahmana is upheld, the latter is compared to the water and to the stone, while the 

ksatriya is compared to the fire and to iron. The text goes on to say that "rulers do not 

prosper without priests and priests do not thrive without rulers," and that "the priest is 

said to be the root of the law, and the ruler is the peak." Odd as it may seem, these 

ideas originally were not totally alien to Christianity itself. According to the testi- 

mony of Eginhard, after Charlemagne was consecrated and hailed with the formula, 

"Long life and victory to Charles the Great, crowned by God, great and peaceful 

emperor of the Romans!" the pope "prostrated himself (adoravit) before Charles, 

according to the ritual established at the time of the ancient emperors." In the time 

of Charlemagne and of Louis the Pius, as in the time of the Christian Roman and 

Byzantine emperors, the ecclesiastical councils were summoned, authorized, and 

presided over by the prince, to whom the bishops presented the conclusions they had 

reached, not only in matters of discipline but in matters of faith and doctrine as well, 

with the formula: "O Your Lordship and Emperor! May your wisdom integrate what 

is found lacking, correct what is against reason. . . ." Almost as in an echo this bears 

witness to the fact that the ancient primacy and an undeniable authority over the 

priesthood, even in matters of wisdom, was attributed to the ruler. The liturgy of 

power, typical of the primordial tradition, still subsists. It was not a pagan, but Bossuet, 

a Catholic bishop (1627-1704), who declared in modem times that the sovereign is 

the "image of God" on earth and who exclaimed: "You are divine though you are 

subject to death, and your authority does not die!"

When the priestly caste, however, by virtue of the consecration that it adminisers 

 demands that the regal authority should recognize the hierarchical superiority 

of the priesthood ("unquestionably, a lesser person is blessed by a greater," Heb. 

7:7) and be subjected to it — such was, in Europe, the Church's claim during the 

struggle for the investitures — this amounts to a full-blown heresy, totally subversive 

of traditional truths. In reality, as early as in the dark ages of prehistory we can detect 

the first episodes of the conflict between regal and priestly authority, since they both 

claimed for themselves the primacy that belongs to what is prior and superior to each 

of them. Contrary to common opinion, in the beginning this contrast was not moti- 

vated at all by a yearning for political hegemony; the cause of this conflict had a 

deeper root in two opposing spiritual attitudes. According to the prevalent form he 

was destined to assume after the differentiation of dignities, the priest is by defini- 

tion always an interpreter and a mediator of the divine: as powerful as he may be, he 

will always be aware of addressing God as his Lord. The sacred king, on the other 

hand, feels that he belongs to the same stock as the gods; he ignores the feeling of 

religious subordination and cannot help but be intolerant of any claim to supremacy 

advanced by the priesthood. Later times witnessed the emergence of forms of an 

antitraditional anarchy that was manifested mainly in two ways: either as a royalty 

that is a mere temporal power in rebellion against spiritual authority; or as a spiritu- 

ality of a "lunar" character in rebellion against a spirituality embodied by kings who 

were still aware of their ancient function. In both instances, heterodoxy was destined 

to emerge from the ruins of the traditional world. The first path will lead to the 

hegemony of the "political" element, the secularization of the idea of the state, the 

destruction of every authentic hierarchy, and last but not least, to the modern forms 

of an illusory and materialistic virility and power that are destined to be swept away 

by the power of the world of the masses in its collectivist versions. The second path 

will run parallel to the first; it will initially be manifested through the advent of the 

"civilization of the Mother" and through its pantheist spirituality, and later on through 

the varieties of what constitutes devotional religion. 

The Middle Ages were the theater of the last great episode in the abovementioned 

conflict between the religious universalism represented by the Church and the regal 

ideal, embodied, though not without some compromises, in the Holy Roman Empire. 

According to the regal ideal, the emperor is really the caput ecclesiae, not in the 

sense that he takes the place of the head of the priestly hierarchy (the pope), but in 

the sense that only in the imperial function may the force that is represented by the 

Church and that animates Christianity efficaciously impose its dominion. In this 

context, 

"The world, portrayed as a vast unitary whole represented by the Church, 

was perceived as a body in which the single members are coordinated 

under the supreme direction of the Emperor, who is at the same time 

the leader of the realm and of the Church."

The emperor, although he was constituted as such by the rite of investiture that 

followed the other investitures relative to his secular aspect of Teutonic prince, claimed 

to have received his right and his power directly from God and claimed to acknowl- 

edge only God above himself; therefore the role of the head of the priestly hierarchy 

who had consecrated him could logically be only that of a mere mediator, unable — 

according to the Ghibelline ideal — to revoke by means of excommunication the su- 

pernatural force with which the emperor had been endowed. Before the Gregorian 

interpretation subverted the very essence of the ancient symbols, the old tradition 

was upheld in lieu of the fact that the Emp,re had always and everywhere been 

compared to the sun as the Church had. been compared to the moon. Moreover, even 

at the times of her highest prestige, the Church attributed to herself an essentially 

feminine symbolism (that of a mother) in relation to the king, whom she viewed as 

her "son"; the Upanisads' designation (the brahmana as the mother of the ksatram) 

appears again in this symbolism, this time in concomitance with the supremacist 

fancies of a gynaecocratic civilization marked by an antiheroic subordination of the 

son to the mother and by an emphasis on the mother's privileges. After all, based on 

what I have discussed so far, it is clear that the very assumption of the title of pontifex 

maximus by the head of the Christian religion, the pope, turned out to be more or less 

a usurpation, since pontifex magnus was originally a function of the king and of the 

Roman Augustus. Likewise, the characteristic symbols of the papacy, the double 

keys and the ship, were borrowed from the ancient Roman cult of Janus. The papal 

tiara itself derives from a dignity that was not religious or priestly, but essentially 

initiatory, and from the dignity proper of the "Lord of the Center" or of the "sover- 

eign of the three worlds." In all this we can visibly detect a distortion and an abusive 

shift of dimension that, although they occurred in a hidden way, are nevertheless 

real and testify to a significant deviation from the pure traditional ideal. 

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