The Forbidden Universe (46 page)

The Hermetica should, at the very least, be given its due because of its truly towering influence over our culture and history since the fifteenth century, especially its powerful role in creating science – though today’s practitioners themselves are either unaware of or unwilling to accept this fact. As Richard Westfall writes in relation to Newton:

This convergence of the mechanistic with the mystical is recognized, albeit apparently unconsciously, by the likes of Wheeler, who repeatedly related his work to Leibniz – in turn, at the very least a closet Hermeticist whose own hero was Giordano Bruno – writing, for example:

Westfall points out that the term ‘occult’ first took on its negative connotation when seventeenth-century
mechanistic
scientists began to use it as a putdown. And so the golden age of scientific mystics was brought down to the level of the sinister, illusory, cheap and nasty. But in fact, ‘occult’ was originally a synonym for ‘Hermetic’.
³

After immersing ourselves over the years not only in the history of religions and heresies but also in the history of science, in talking to scientists, delving into the obvious and less obvious learned papers and attending lectures from the very abstruse and arcane to the most direct mechanistic science, we have concluded – along with many of those we quote in this book – that science still needs the Hermetic wisdom.

Science would have found it considerably easier to make sense of the data that it is now uncovering – the designer universe, life as a cosmic imperative, the directionality of evolution, the participatory universe – if it had never jettisoned the Hermetic framework. In fact, it would have
predicted
these discoveries. And although it is impossible to know for sure, we believe the signs are there in the texts themselves that a Hermeticized science would have already advanced far beyond the point that we have reached today.
But all is not lost. David Fideler, editor of
Alexandria: the Journal of Western Cosmological Tradition
, argues that modern science is moving ever more in a Neoplatonic (for which read Hermetic) direction:

Is the ‘living universe’ merely a metaphor? Was it ever? Hermeticists certainly meant it literally. Yet humanity
is
stranded in ‘Flatland’, shut off from the radiance of the Hermetic vision and all the vast benefits it bestows. This, however, is not inevitably humanity’s end. We can – and must – escape from Flatland.

Fideler refers to the holistic nature of existence, citing the fact that in 1982 physicists showed particles of light from a common source ‘continue to act in concert with one another’ no matter how far apart they are, a phenomenon known as ‘quantum nonlocality’. He explains:

Fideler argues that the breakdown of the mechanistic worldview requires a new type of science, and proposes that a fusion of the philosophy of Plotinus and Wheeler’s concept of the participatory universe should provide the model. The consequence, says Fideler, is that:

Unsurprisingly, the ancient source of both Neoplatonism and Hermeticism, the wisdom of Heliopolis, also offers a way forward, out of Flatland. Karl Luckert states emphatically:

Yes, science should undoubtedly be more contemplative, inviting practitioners to utilize every level of their minds without embarrassment or shame. The subconscious mind, usually quiescent under a welter of reason and mundane concerns, has long been acknowledged as the most fertile repository of inspiration and even otherwise hidden knowledge. Take the famous case of the German chemist August Kekulé (1829–1896), who, together with a great many of his scientific peers, had been puzzling for a long time about the structure of benzene, but without success. Falling into a daydream or reverie he saw a snake
swallowing
its own tail. On coming back to normal consciousness, he realized he had been presented with the answer: six carbon atoms in a ring … This was not his only example of subconscious prodding. On an earlier occasion a reverie had also provided him with crucial information. On the top of a London omnibus an image of dancing molecules floated into his head, giving him the insight into the theory of chemical structure – and securing him a place in scientific history.

Backed up by arduous study and hard facts, the use of intuition and hunches often provide similar short-cuts – if they are allowed to. Had Kekulé dismissed his insights as ‘just daydreams’ he might never have made his great discoveries.

As that episode reveals, the subconscious mind deals in symbolism and poetry – hence the distinctive surrealism of dreams – the very language that enables the Hermetic texts to seduce and penetrate all levels of the mind at once. Such symbolism is not moonshine or mumbo jumbo. It is a direct message to the centre of every mind.

The history of science portrays the mechanistic revolution as an inevitable coming to our senses, a right and proper intellectual maturation. But the reality is that the move
away from the mystical side of science was a historical accident. James I’s paranoid hatred and fear of witches made it expedient for the likes of Francis Bacon to be seen to have no occult connections, so that side of Hermeticism rapidly became not only unwise, but unfashionable. And the Counter Reformation made it equally dangerous for non-Catholics to be occultists (Catholic occultists not being terribly welcome either), while the French Catholics built up Descartes to oppose the despised Rosicrucianism. If events in the seventeenth century had been slightly different, no doubt all our science would have continued to work undisturbed within the Hermetic principles right through to today. After all, with such a distinguished track record it would have been foolish to junk it for no reason.

And if the Hermetica had remained influential in academia, science is not the only field that would be different, since the understanding of the universe it bestows affects pretty much everything else in our culture.

When accepting the Liberty Medal on 4 July 1994, Václav Havel, the former dissident playwright who became the first President of the new Czech Republic after the end of the Cold War, lamented the way human rights and freedoms, despite all the big changes that came with the downfall of communism and end of the Cold War, had become ‘mere froth floating on the subsiding waters of faith in a purely scientific relationship to the world’.
⁸
He went on to say that:

Havel cited as examples of this ‘post-modern science’ both
the anthropic cosmological principle and the Gaia hypothesis. Of the anthropic principle he said:

In his view the anthropic principle shows that ‘we are mysteriously connected to the entire universe; we are mirrored in it just as the entire evolution of the universe is mirrored in us’.
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If science had been uninterruptedly Hermetic, would the environment be in the same terrifying condition we find it in today? Almost certainly not. Without
over-sentimentalizing
, the Earth itself would have been cherished as a living being. There would be no question of having to fight for human rights or the right of animals to be treated gently and with respect. If every human and every beast is an integral part of all creation, then they are all part of us in a very real way. Hurting them would be hurting ourselves. The Hermetic system adds amoral centre to science, which is largely lacking in its amoral mechanistic manifestations and depends almost entirely on the ethics and integrity of individual practitioners.

We began this book by arguing that the magical
worldview
is essentially hardwired into humanity. Now we can see this is because human beings are aware, at some deep level, of the true nature of the universe and our astonishingly significant role in it. We are indeed hardwired to feel the hollowness of the God-shaped hole deep inside, as the Hermetica acknowledges: ‘Praising god is in our nature as humans because we happen to be in some sense his descendants …’
¹²

The evidence that science itself has produced supports
the essential ideas that underpin the sense of Otherness innate to human beings. Inconvenient though it may be for the Dawkins’ school, there is no doubt that cosmology, physics and many other disciplines, including even biology, present evidence that the universe is non-random, meaningful and designed for life. Science has even felt compelled to rewrite its own rules when it comes across evidence of purpose and design, as is evidenced by the overzealous embracing of the multiverse. It is as if the scientific world is terrified that admitting
anything
non-random
will let all the religious ‘nonsense’ back in.

As with any philosophy worth contemplating, it is the implications that really matter. The path of Hermes Trismegistus illuminated the radiant Renaissance spirit, which burst forth from Pico della Mirandola’s
Oration on the Dignity of Man
, which with its high praise for ‘miraculous man’ cleared with one bound the bigot-built walls that imprisoned human ignorance. Human beings are brilliant because we are all potentially gods and creators. Not born in sin and dirt but in joy and brightness, entering the world not as devil-filled infants but in William Wordsworth’s famous words ‘trailing clouds of glory’. The implications of being god-like humans are enormous. Nothing is beyond us. We can literally reach for the stars. As the Hermetica emphasizes: