The Forbidden Universe (47 page)

Likewise, Plotinus wrote of ‘finding the strength to see divinity within’.
¹⁴

However, the Hermetic impetus to find new worlds to conquer carries with it a sense of responsibility. True Hermeticists can never be dictators nor seek to crush the weak and the vulnerable. For if they themselves, as they believe, are also the universe and even God, how can they damage a fellow god in need of their help? As the
Corpus Hermeticum
states profoundly: ‘There is but one religion of god, and that is not to be evil.’
¹⁵

In the 1970s there was a vogue for books linking the discoveries of physics with Eastern mysticism, such as the works of Fritjof Capra, which provided many seekers with some degree of nourishment to assuage their spiritual hunger. But we should acknowledge that the West has its own, forgotten tradition – Hermeticism – just waiting to provide comfort, knowledge, excitement and freedom.

Like any idea that can turn the world around, the Hermetic universe has been forbidden by the powers of intellectual darkness. The Church demonized it, fearing its potential for firing up generations of men and women to think for themselves about any subjects that seized their hearts and minds. And after science disowned and disinherited it, originally out of expediency, it became an ingrained prejudice. But the Hermetic flame never died and now, thanks to science itself, the fire – in all but name – seems ready to erupt into the world.

If any one individual symbolizes the tormented history of the Hermetic tradition it is Giordano Bruno. Although a rather sinister statue now stands in Rome at the site of his execution, providing a focus for crowds of pilgrims, few of them seem to realize exactly what he died for. Poor Bruno is either completely ignored or totally misunderstood – if he is remembered at all. He is ultimately portrayed as condemned by the Church either for preaching the existence of the infinite universe or for his support for Copernicus. In a 2010 Reith Lecture, Lord Rees said: ‘The
Italian monk and scholar Giordano Bruno, burnt at the stake in 1600, conjectured that the stars were other “suns”, each with their retinue of planets.’
¹⁶
The implication is that he died for science in the modern sense. But Bruno was, in reality, a martyr for
the Hermetic tradition
.

In Europe, the Church told their flock that they were individually weak, miserable sinners, but then the Hermetic Renaissance declared they were quite the opposite, lighting the way to the scientific revolution. In the beginning all science was Hermetic science. But something went badly wrong. When it junked the Hermetic philosophy, science began to preach that we owe our existence to a long series of accidents and that ultimately our lives have no meaning. The sense of unlimited horizons and the joy of being alive were eroded.

When the scientific wisdom was plucked from Hermeticism to fuel the engines of progress for today’s world and the underlying transcendentalism rejected, the whole tradition lost its soul – specifically the feminine aspect of its soul. When science set its stern face towards the test tube and the slide rule it was in effect turning its back on
Sophia
, the female aspect of the Hermetic knowledge, literally God’s other half. And in the ironic replay of the excision of the sacred feminine from Christianity, here science lost not only its soul but also its heart.

Although the names of the great Hermeticists that have come down to us are resolutely male, practitioners such as Bruno took pains to emphasise the rightful place of the feminine, of Isis and Sophia, in the great scheme of things. We suggest that this was not merely some poetic turn of phrase, but a profound acknowledgement of the necessity to embrace the female side of learning and understanding. Whereas men tend to be literal and logical, women tend to think in much more holistic and symbolic ways. To most women who understand the divine, it can be understood
immediately, as a whole. It is not necessary to spell things out or limit their participation in the cosmic dance with hard dogma and punishment. That is what terrified the Inquisitors, and what continues to disturb the Church authorities today.

To be a Hermeticist, no matter what one’s gender, is to accept and utilise both male and female mindsets, embodied in the ancient Hermetic and alchemical symbol of the hermaphrodite. Only by becoming whole oneself can the universe be finally understood and totally participated in.

But science, like the Judeo-Christian religions, severed its ties with Sophia, with its other half. And although it can weigh, measure, calculate and send men to play golf on the moon, the real awe and glory of the universe lies in the human heart and soul. If it is allowed to be whole. This was Bruno’s message. This was the ancient wisdom. And simple though it may seem, it is in itself one of the profoundest secrets of all.

The moment to restore the sense of wonder is long overdue. There has never been a better time to let the ‘miracle of man’ back in.

Sometimes research turns up exciting connections that frustratingly don’t belong to the main argument of a book. As some of the information we uncovered on the origins of the Hermetica isn’t directly relevant to
The Forbidden Universe
but relates to unfinished business in our previous book,
The Masks of Christ
, we have included it in this appendix.

The inclusion of Hermetic texts such as a Coptic copy of
Asclepius
in the famous collection of books discovered at Nag Hammadi in Egypt in 1945 (often referred to as the Gnostic Gospels) revealed the close connection between Gnosticism and Hermeticism. Brian P. Copenhaver explains its significance (his emphases):

Other Nag Hammadi books may be largely innocent of the ‘wildest efflorescences’ but they do have ‘doctrinal parallels’
²
with the Hermetica. Although this shows that the writers came from a similar school, they often extrapolated their ideas very differently, sometimes in strangely incompatible ways. (Plotinus wrote a tract called
Against the Gnostics
, accusing them of developing their ideas erroneously.)

The discovery had a major impact, and went so far as inspiring the classic
The Gnostic Religion
(1958), by the German-American philosopher Hans Jonas, to discuss Hermeticism alongside the more familiar Gnostic systems.
³

Thanks to Dan Brown’s blockbusters, millions of people worldwide now know about Gnosticism, the version of Christianity that was eventually anathematized by the emergent Catholic Church and which is associated most with what the Church would have concealed from us. (One of the main revelations of the Nag Hammadi books was the importance of Mary Magdalene and her apparently intimate relationship with Jesus.)

The precise origins of Gnosticism are uncertain and controversial. In a religious sense the term first surfaces towards the end of the second century CE in a Christian context, referring to a sect deemed heretical by the early Church because of its different view of God, Jesus and the path to salvation. The word itself derives from the Greek
gnostikos
, which simply means the ability to acquire knowledge. These heretics called themselves
gnostikoi
– ‘knowers’ – but the term was also applied to many similar Christian sects, each with its very different views.

The essential difference – what really set them beyond the pale to their detractors – was that these sects believed an understanding of God and individual salvation could be won through direct
personal
experience. Furthermore there was no need for a Church or priesthood as intermediaries – which posed an obvious challenge to the power of the Vatican, with its emphasis on faith rather than understanding, and on collective experience.

Until the last century or so, the earliest known accounts of Gnosticism were found in hostile Christian writings, which stated it grew out of Christianity and therefore post-dated Jesus and Paul. However, more recent research has revealed that Gnostic beliefs were not confined to Christianity, and that the Christian Gnostics had drawn their worldview from earlier pagan sources, adapting them to the teachings of Jesus.

As a result, the question of the origins of Gnosticism has been hotly debated ever since, but without reaching any conclusive answer. What is known is that it first appeared in the Middle East, particularly Egypt. Different historians champion a Greek, Jewish or Iranian background, or a fusion of all three in Hellenic Alexandria. But once again it is Egypt that beckons.

The fundamental problem in attempting to trace Gnosticism to its source is that there is no agreed definition of ‘Gnostic’. To non-specialists (and New Agers) it simply refers to the attitude that salvation or enlightenment is in one’s own hands, and requires personal communion with the divine. For academics it describes a specific set of beliefs about the nature of the material world. But there is no consensus about what they are. Even the accepted definition varies between different countries.
⁴
That being said, they do agree on certain basic facts.

Gnostics see the material world as inherently flawed, separated from its creator, and believe that the divine and material are mutually antithetical, a belief known as dualism. For Gnostics, salvation is escaping from the prison of the material world, although different Gnostic sects came up with wildly different ways of doing so. For the Christian Gnostics, this meant devising a radically different interpretation of the nature and role of Jesus from the one held by the early Church – another reason why it hated them. (Whether the Church was wrong
and the Gnostics right is sadly outside the scope of this book.) Another defining characteristic of Gnosticism is a belief that the god of this world isn’t the
real
God. A Kafkaesque, and even
Matrix
-like sense of illusion permeates much of Gnostic thinking. This is hardly a coincidence:
The Matri
x
movies unashamedly draw on Gnostic ideas.

Different Gnostic schools veered off in different
directions
: the god of this world may be acting under the true God’s instructions, may be an evil entity masquerading as God or may be deluded into believing that they actually are God. Then there is the question of the practical applications of spirit-matter dualism: it might lead to asceticism and mortification of the flesh, as it often did. Or it might lead into hedonistic indulgence in the world of the senses – as indeed it did also.