Questing for the Hermetic Tradition

[pyramids of Giza]

Has a whole year passed already? That was my reaction when asked by Quest to speak at this year's convention. They say that time speeds up as you get older or maybe it's just as you get busier. Either way it seems like only yesterday that Robert Bauval and I were fussing round the pyramids, making the BBC programme based on The Orion Mystery. Yet that was at the end of 1993, already nearly four years ago. Initially I was surprised by the extraordinary and enthusiastic response the programme and book received, not just from fellow 'questers', whom I knew would be delighted by the revelation that the pyramids were really launch pads to the stars, but from a wide cross-section of ordinary folk who had never before given such matters any thought. Since then Robert and I have received hundreds of letters from all over the world, most of them favourable, thanking us for releasing a subject too long confined by the shackles of orthodox Egyptology.

Opening the box

At that time there was huge interest in the discovery by Rudolf Gantenbrink of a 'door' at the end of the southern shaft from the Queen's Chamber. We all hoped and believed that this would soon be opened, maybe leading to a discovery of greater importance than the tomb of Tutankhamen. Now, four and half years after Gantenbrink's discovery, we still await announcement of what lies behind the door. It seems inconceivable that no-one has yet taken a look but to date there has been no formal announcement of any discovery.To add to the air of mystery there are further as yet unsubstantiated rumours of secret chambers and tunnels near the Sphinx. At the present rate there will be spacemen on Mars before a proper dig is sanctioned. [Benben of Amenophis III]

(benben stone from pyramid of Amemophis III, Cairo Museum)

I remain convinced that there is something of great importance concealed in the Great Pyramid: perhaps the BenBen stone from Heliopolis or maybe the original version of the 'Book of Thoth', the corpus of writings on which was based the Egyptian 'Book of the Dead'. In 1994 I was shown some pictures drawn by a clairvoyant called Ann Walker in January 1993. One of these bore an uncanny resemblance to Gantenbrink's door, which wasn't discovered till ten weeks later. Impatient with the lack of activity in Egypt, I asked her to use her psychic powers to have a look for us at what lies behind the door. I have put up pictures of what she described on my website (http://www.netlink.co.uk/users/solos) [Note: as the present website is replacing the old one, this article will shortly be transferred here] and invite all interested parties to take a look. Of course she may be wrong but won't it be fun if she is even half-right?

Religion, Science and Philosophy

I think it was Winston Churchill (or maybe he was quoting Shakespeare) who said that 'there is a tide in the affairs of man which if taken at the flood leads on to greater things.' This certainly seems to be the case where the uncovering of ancient mysteries is concerned. It is probably no coincidence that not long after The Orion Mystery was published, AA&ES, the fore-runner of Quest for knowledge magazine, came onto the scene. There is today a thirst for knowledge-or rather wisdom-such as has never before been seen. In part this is due to the approaching millenium, to the sense that time is running out in the run-up to some apocalypse which may or may not presage the dawn of a new age of enlightenment. Yet, strange as it may seem, it is also a result of improved living standards and greater leisure time in a world which has not seen a major war for over fifty years. Today, at least in the west, more people than ever before have the time and energy to think about the big questions of life: Where do we come from-to where do we go?

In the past-and I mean here the twelve hundred years or so between when Christianity established itself in Europe as the dominant force over all other religions and the publication in 1543 of Copernicus' De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, which revealed that the sun lay at the centre of our local cosmos-such questions had ready answers. It was taken for granted that our souls, if not our bodies, came from God and would return to heaven after death-provided, that is, we lived good Christian lives and died in a state of grace. The realisation that the earth is not and never had been the centre of the universe undermined such simple faith. So it was not without reason that the inquisition imprisoned Galileo for promoting the simple theory that the earth goes round the sun and not vice-versa-a fact probably well-understood in the ancient world-for it has deep philosophical implications. In a very real sense Galileo had taken a second bite out of the fruit of the tree of knowledge exposing not just his own nakedness but that of all the sons and daughters of Adam.

Though the church had the power to imprison Galileo, it could not stop the revolution he and Copernicus had started. Within a short time Johannes Kepler published the results of his own findings, revealing that the planets travel along fixed orbits determinable by scientific laws. Building on Kepler's work, Isaac Newton was able to develop his own theory of gravity to explain that what held the planets to their courses was the gravitational attraction between all matter from the smallest particle to the largest star.

In skilled hands the new tools of what was now called 'Natural Science' were to prove irresistible in opening further floodgates of knowledge concerning the natural world. If the work of earlier scientists had challenged the old Christian cosmology, the publication of Darwin's On the Origin of Species in 1859 crucified what remained of its anthropology. No longer was it possible, or so it seemed, to regard man as anything more than an intelligent ape, standing at the top of a ladder of evolution leading back to the most primitive bacteria and viruses. 'Adam', far from being a creature of God, endowed by his maker with reason, intelligence and above all a soul, was no more than a freak of nature: the unnatural off-spring of promiscuous nature. On July 18, 1870 Pope Pius X gave his reply to the waverers by pronouncing his own infallibility on matters of dogma. It was an admission of weakness, a retreat under a comfort-blanket of fundamentalism that gave the field to the church's sternest critics. It was left to the German philosopher Nietzche to announce the final blasphemy that even Darwin dared not to utter: "God is dead"!

Yet side by side with the growth of natural science was a new awakening of the spirit. The great minds of the seventeenth century: Galileo, Kepler and Newton, belonged to men intent of rediscovering the mysteries of the past as well as the future. They were not just scientists but philosophers who sought to reconcile their discoveries of laws of nature with spiritual principles. They understood that every religion has its esoteric level; that hidden behind the symbols and stories of the Bible is a secret doctrine understandable only to the initiated. For them the unravelling of this secret code was every bit as exciting as the discovery of the laws of nature.

Newton, probably the world's greatest ever scientist, had the broadest of minds, his studies encompassing everything from optics to the Book of Revelations. He was fascinated by the pyramids, analysing the dimensions of the Great Pyramid and its measures-an area of study which would have had him branded as a 'Pyramidiot' by today's Egyptologists. Kepler also studied his Bible and was the first to announce that the star that guided the Magi was probably the conjunction of the two giant planets, Jupiter and Saturn, which occurred in 7 BC. He understood that at the time of Christ the lamp of reason, the ancient Gnosis, had been passed like a torch to the initiates who wrote the New Testament. For saying this too loudly, Giodano Bruno had been burnt at the stake in 1600.

Following the lead given by these great scientists and philosophers, my own life's work has been an exploration of the same ancient gnosis. Like them I have come to understand that astrosophy or 'star-wisdom' is one of the main keys for unlocking the ancient mysteries. I am delighted to have been invited to speak at this years 'Quest Convention', an event which is now becoming firmly fixed in the calendar as one of the major occassions for exchanging ideas with fellow researchers. The talk I am proposing to give is loosely labelled 'Hermetic Traditions', which in essence is what we are talking about when we mention the ancient mysteries. My work, much of it documented in my book Magi: the quest for a secret tradition, concerns the rediscovery of the original gnosis of Hermes Trismegistus and how this knowledge lives on in the Christian traditions of today. For without a knowledge of symbolic astrology it is impossible to properly understand the prophecies contained in the Bible. It is my belief, one I know that is shared by many who read this magazine, that we really are living in a time of revelation. I for one look forward to what is coming.

Article first published in "Quest" magazine Vol.1 issue 5.