The individual's quest for gnosis, in both its Hermetic and purely Gnostic forms, involved putting off the material world and its illusions. The reader will recall from Part I the asceticism of the Gnostic sages of Alexandria and of their successors the Cathar and Bogomil perfecti. The writers of the Hermetic texts would have approved: ‘If a man understands the design of god,’ says the Asclepius, ‘he will despise all material things.’37
On the other hand, for those who persist in willful ignorance, all the vices and evils that are inherent in the material realm: … grow in strength, and lacerate the soul with incurable sores; and infected and corrupted by the poison, the soul breaks out in tumours, so to speak, save in the case of those whose souls are cured by the sovereign remedy of knowledge and intelligence.38
Like so much else in the Hermetica, this constant emphasis on the role of knowledge and intelligence in the soul's struggle to win immortality seems to have strong precursors in the ancient Egyptian funerary texts. There we encounter a bearded god called Sia who attends Ra in the solar barque. Sia's special quality is that he is the personification of intelligence39 so it is interesting that his role in bringing the soul of the deceased safely through the Netherworld is repeatedly emphasised. In Spell 237 of the Coffin Texts, for example, the deceased embarks on his afterlife journey with confidence stating: ‘I know what Sia knows, and a path is opened for me …’40 Earlier in Spell 38 we read: ‘I have seen the chest [i.e strongbox] of Sia and I know what is in it …’41 Another metaphor for the crucial importance of intelligence is employed in Spell 689 which states: ‘This King has swallowed Sia, he has eaten magic from the magician.’42 In the Book of What is in the Duat we find Sia accompanying the deceased on his journey through the Netherworld and opening gates of fire that would otherwise remain closed to him.43
Stars and angels falling to earth
In the ancient Egyptian system the afterlife journey through the Netherworld – the Duat – was the opportunity for the ‘perfected spirit’ (i.e. one that had acquired the necessary knowledge during incarnation on earth) to throw off forever the entrapments of matter, ascend to the spiritual realms and become, metaphorically, a star in heaven. In the case of initiates in the Gnostic system, whether in its early Christian or later Cathar forms, we know that this sought-after ‘ascent to heaven’ was in fact understood as a re-ascent of our angelic souls to the heavenly realms from which they had fallen long ago.
The reader will recall from Chapter Three vivid descriptions of angels falling ‘like rain upon the earth’ through a hole in heaven, having been tempted downwards by Satan who then trapped them in human bodies and the cycle of reincarnation. There are some striking but neglected passages in the ancient Egyptian texts which seem to us to be expressions of essentially the same idea and once again provide support for a mysterious connection between the religion of ancient Egypt and the Hermetic and Gnostic religions. For example in Chapter 99 of the Book of the Dead we read: This land is baleful and the stars have overbalanced themselves and have fallen on their faces therein, and they have not found anything which will help them to ascend again …44
Routine use is made in the ancient Egyptian texts of the star as a metaphor for the beatified and ‘perfected’ soul. We therefore see little difference in intent between this image of fallen stars unable to get back to the sky and the Gnostic image of fallen angels unable to return to heaven. Of course the purest and most spiritual angels in the Gnostic/Cathar system were those who resisted temptation and never fell to earth at all. So it was too amongst the ancient Egyptians as far back as the Pyramid Texts in 2300 BC: The King is one of those … beings … who will never fall to the earth from the sky …45
Reproducing eternity in a copy
At the heart of all such imagery, whether ancient Egyptian, Gnostic or Hermetic, is the sense of a radical rupture between matter and spirit, sky and earth. We've seen how all three of these religions taught the need for some sort of special knowledge – gnosis – as a way of escape for souls trapped ‘below’. In the case of the Cathars the saving knowledge was acquired through asceticism, study, and the initiation ritual known as the consolamentum. In the case of the Hermeticists and the ancient Egyptians, as we saw earlier and in Chapter Eight, there was a curious interest in cities which were to be made, so far as possible, in ‘the image of heaven’. By somehow replicating or ‘copying’ celestial perfection on earth, the clear implication of the Hermetic texts is that such cities would provide untold benefits to their inhabitants, constrain them ‘to be virtuous’ and keep them ‘healthy and wise’.46
In the Pimander, the first book of the Hermetic collection, we even find this idea of replication of the above by the below employed in describing the process of creation. We are led to understand that there exists an ‘archetypal form’, perceptible only to the mind and not at all to the senses, ‘which is prior to the beginning of things and is limitless.’ The material world: … issued from God's Purpose, which beheld that beauteous world [i.e. the archetypal form] and copied it.47
The Asclepius likewise speaks of a ‘higher’ archetypal Kosmos that is imperceptible to the senses but that nevertheless influences and shapes the lower ‘sensible’ Kosmos that we inhabit as beings of matter: If you consider the whole, you will learn that in truth the sensible Kosmos itself, with all things that are therein, is woven like a garment by that higher Kosmos.48
A little later the same text adds: God … stands unmoved; and eternity likewise is ever changeless, containing in itself a Kosmos which is without beginning, even that Kosmos which we rightly call ‘imperceptible to sense’. This sensible Kosmos [i.e. the universe of matter and space that we see all around us] has been made in the image of that other Kosmos, and reproduces eternity in a copy.49
In the Discourses of Hermes to Tat we learn more about the mechanisms of the ‘copying’ process: The forces do not work upward from below, but downward from above. The things in heaven receive no benefits from the things on earth; but the things on earth receive all benefits from the things in heaven.50
In the beautiful and mysterious Kore Kosmou the point is re-emphasised with more detail: All the world which lies below has been set in order and filled with contents by the things which are placed above; for the things below have not the power to set in order the world above. The weaker mysteries, then, must yield to the stronger; and the system of things on high is stronger than the things below.51
Hermetic landscapes
We are now better equipped to understand the central Hermetic notion, introduced in Chapter Eight, of ancient Egypt as an ‘image of heaven’: Do you not know, Asclepius, that Egypt is an image of heaven? Or, to be more precise, that everything governed and moved in heaven came down to Egypt and was transferred there? If truth were told, our land is the temple of the whole world …52
If the land of Egypt is ‘an image of heaven’, and for that reason ‘the temple of the whole world’, then it's easy to understand how those who believed this might have wanted to build temples that were also – in their own smaller-scale way – ‘images of heaven’. The same logic would also apply to the creation and positioning of great monuments. And of course to the planning and building – or rebuilding – of cities. In other words if we know that a person is a committed initiate of the Hermetic system then we can predict that he or she will take an interest in temples, monuments and cities that in some way ‘imitate’ or ‘copy’ heaven. If it so happens that the initiate is a great king or a person otherwise in a position to have a major influence on decisions about the built environment, we might expect to see that interest turned to action.
It is understood that the earthly ‘copy’ is and always will be inferior to the heavenly archetype on which it is modelled because ‘there is nothing good on earth; there is nothing bad in heaven,’ and because while ‘nothing in heaven is in bondage, nothing on earth is free.’53 Nevertheless, the clear logic of the Hermetic texts is that it is better to copy the perfection of hea
ven on earth – however inferior the results – than to do nothing at all. In the Discourses of Hermes to Tat we read: All things on earth … are unreal; but some of them – not all, but some few only – are copies of reality … When the appearance flows in from above, it becomes an imitation of reality. But apart from the working of power from above, it remains an illusion; just as a painted portrait presents to us in appearance the body of the man we see in it, but is not in itself a human body.54
It seems perfectly obvious from this that a Hermetic king would prefer to dispose his monuments, temples and cities so that ‘power from above’ would be able to work in them. And the way to do that, as the texts themselves suggest, would be to fashion the built environment as an ‘imitation of reality’, ‘an image of heaven’, ‘a reproduction of eternity in a copy’…
The beauty of the archetype
Practiced in Europe between the 10th and the 14th centuries, the Gnostic religion of the Bogomils and the Cathars taught an intense ‘matter-spirit dualism’. As we would expect in such closely interconnected systems, it also made use of ‘sky-ground’ metaphors of the specifically Hermetic and ancient Egyptian type. In Chapter Three we cite several examples of such Bogomil and Cathar teachings, including the notion that a number of their sacred books had been ‘written in heaven and brought down to earth’ and the following classically ‘Hermetic’ doctrine: For just as it is on earth, so also it is in the firmament, because replicas of what are in the firmament are on earth.55
Once again we find striking precedents in the supposedly unrelated funerary texts of ancient Egypt. There are, for example, numerous exhortations calling upon initiates to make copies on the earth of a region of the sky called the Duat incorporating the constellation of Orion – associated with the god Osiris – and the star Sirius, associated with the goddess Isis.56 This was the sky-region believed to be the location of the ancient Egyptian Netherworld, where souls journeyed and were judged after death. It was therefore thought to be vitally important to gain foreknowledge of it and of the trials that awaited the soul there. We learn from the Book of What is in the Duat (circa 1400 BC), that one way to attain this gnosis was to build copies on the ground‘of the hidden circle of the Duat in the body of Nut [the sky]’57: Whosoever shall make an exact copy of these forms, and shall know it, shall be a spirit well-equipped both in heaven and in earth, unfailingly, and regularly and eternally.58
Whosoever shall make a copy thereof, and shall know it upon earth, it shall act as a magical protector for him both in heaven and in earth, unfailingly and regularly and eternally.59
For a supposedly unrelated text, it is odd that the Book of What is in the Duat seems to draw the same distinction as the Hermetica between the heavenly archetype, that is perceptible only to the mind, and the earthly copy that is perceptible to the senses. Both traditions therefore necessarily imply a group of initiates who were trained to ‘see’ – i.e. attain gnosis of – what otherwise only the gods could see: The secret representation of the Duat is not known to men and women.60
Whosoever shall make a copy of these representations according to this copy of what is in the Lament of the Duat, which cannot be looked at or seen, and whosoever shall know these secret images, shall be in the condition of a spirit who is equipped for journeying …61 [Emphasis added]
To become ‘a spirit equipped for journeying’ was, of course, the goal of the entire ancient Egyptian religious system in the sense that it sought to equip its initiates for spiritual immortality and freedom from the fetters of matter. But it was possible to fail in this quest and for the soul to be destroyed utterly. Consistent and repeated evil acts were inevitably fatal to the soul of the perpetrator. Willful ignorance – always detested by the Hermetic sages – was also believed to be extremely dangerous to one's prospects of eternity. Thus: He who hath no knowledge of the whole or part of the secret representations of the Duat, shall be condemned to destruction.62
We reiterate that the Duat, for the ancient Egyptians, was understood to be a region of the starry sky and that those who aspired to immortality rather than extinction in the afterlife were more or less obliged to attain knowledge of it. Is it a coincidence that an almost identical scenario is painted in the Hermetic texts where, after a lengthy exposition on the sky and stars, we are abruptly told: He who has not failed to get knowledge of these things is able to form an exact conception of god … But it is impossible, my son, for one who is yet in the body to attain to this happiness. A man must train his soul in this life, in order that, when it has entered the other world, where it is permitted to see God, it may not miss the way which leads to him. But men who love the body will never see the vision of the Beautiful and Good. How glorious, my son, is the beauty of that which has neither shape nor colour.63
In other words the beauty of the archetype, which ‘cannot be looked at or seen’ by uninitiated men and women because it is perceptible only to the mind and not at all to the senses.
Transforming the world
The recurrent emphasis on intelligence, reason and the use of the mind to ‘train the soul’ that characterises the Hermetic texts was also the wellspring of their immense influence on science and scientific thinking following their rediscovery in the mid-15th century. By promoting the individual's quest for knowledge and illumination they would prove as powerful an antidote to the dogmas and received wisdoms of the Church during the Renaissance and the Enlightenment as the Gnostic teachings of the Cathars had done in the Middle Ages. Nor in our view is it an accident, but an almost inevitable by-product of these closely-related systems of thought – wherever and whenever they may be applied – that Cathar Gnosticism stimulated its own ‘mini-Renaissance’ across southern Europe in the 12th century.
We speculated in Chapter Two that this Cathar revolution in religious and philosophical ideas, music and poetry, culture and social order, might have transformed the world if the Church had not crushed it – utterly – in the 13th century. It's true that in the Balkans a few scattered Bogomils lingered on as late as the 15th century. To all extents and purposes, however, we accept that the hitherto unbroken chain of Gnostic heresy stretching back to the dawn of the Christian era was snapped when the very last Cathar perfectus, William Belibaste, was burnt at the stake in 1321.
We find it rather remarkable, therefore, that another embodiment of essentially the same ideas should have slipped through the gates of Western culture less than 120 years later. We mean, of course, the Hermetic texts, their emergence from the wilderness after a millennium of silence, and their transferral to the Medici Academy in Florence in 1460.
Either by accident or by some hidden design, they arrived at exactly the right place and time to bring alive again the ancient religion of ‘salvation through knowledge’ that the Church thought it had just killed. In this latest incarnation, however, it would wear a much more overtly ‘ancient Egyptian’ and much less ‘Christian’ face. Perhaps for that very reason it would also set out a more positive and life-giving route towards the goal of world transformation than Gnosticism, with its world-hatred, could ever have achieved.
The Hermeticists shared the Gnostic view that evil is inherent in matter, and thus – through the body – in mankind. Yet they did not allow this recognition to seduce them into the mood of hopeless nihilism and species suicide that one sometimes senses could have led Cathar dualism down a very dark road. Far from that, the Hermetic ‘way’ accepted the human condition, sought our transformation through the elevation of the spiritual element within us, and handed the responsibility directly to the individual and to his own conscience: It is man's duty not to acquiesce in his merely human state, but rather, in the strength of his contemplation of things divine, to scorn and despise that mortal part which has been attached to him because it was needful that he should keep and tend this lower world.64 (Hermetica, Asclepius)
Moreover ‘keeping and tending the lower world’ in the Hermetic scenario is not a repulsive and humiliating imprisonment in ma
tter but a sacred responsibility with a vital role in the cosmic scheme of things that can only be fulfilled by man. The texts speak eloquently for themselves: Man is a being partly divine and partly mortal; not that he is to be thought the lower because he is mortal in part; we ought rather to regard him as exalted by his mortality in that he is by such a lot more fitly and effectively constituted for a purpose preordained. For since he could not have met the demands of both his functions if he had not been made of both kinds of substance, he was fashioned out of both, to the end that he might be able both to tend the earth and to do service to the Deity.65
Man is a marvel, then, Asclepius; honour and reverence to such a being! … Strong in the assurance of that in him which is divine, he scorns the merely human part of his own nature … He raises reverent eyes to heaven above; he tends the earth below … He has access to all; he descends to the depths of the sea by the keenness of his thought; and heaven is not found too high for him, for he measures it by his sagacity, as though it were within his reach.66
To man is given charge of that part of the universe which consists of earth and water; and this earthly part of the universe is kept in order by means of man's knowledge and application of the arts and sciences. For God willed that the universe should not be complete until man had done his part.67