This is an extraordinarily important article. It completes the linkage between our age and
the Atlantean Bronze Age science which rested on the Bronze Age Mathematica
whose foundations I was able to reconstruct in my manuscript ‘Paradigms Shift’.
I expected linkage but what this really informs us
of is that before the
Library of Alexandria was destroyed, they constructed a synthesis of the extant scientific lore which captures much of the knowledge of the Bronze Age. I also suspect that much ancient Chinese material is part of the same tradition and represents shared knowledge.
Library of Alexandria was destroyed, they constructed a synthesis of the extant scientific lore which captures much of the knowledge of the Bronze Age. I also suspect that much ancient Chinese material is part of the same tradition and represents shared knowledge.
A thousand year gap took place in which additions
remained modest until their rediscovery prepared the European mind to apply
scientific method and theological rigor to the material.
From Ancient Egypt to Modern Science:
The Forgotten Link
April 16, 2014 By davidjones
by LYNN PICKNETT & CLIVE PRINCE
—
The ‘Scientific Revolution’ describes
the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century watershed in the basic attitude to the
scientific method, laying the foundations for the modern technological age.
Starting when Copernicus went public with his heliocentric theory in 1543, and
ending when Isaac Newton published Principia
Mathematica in 1687, textbooks say there was a window of just 150
years when European thinking was transformed from superstition to science.
But that’s not the way it was. In
reality, science owes its origins to beliefs that the high priests of modern
science such as Richard Dawkins would regard as even more irrational than
Christianity. Far, far worse to them would be the fact that the particular
‘superstitions’ in question were unprecedentedly influential.
In fact, the Scientific Revolution was
driven by a very specific magical philosophy
and cosmology, set out in a set of texts that inspired all the pioneers of science,
directly or indirectly.
The Books that Really Changed the World
Bluntly, these texts have had a greater
influence on Western civilisation than any other set of texts apart from the
Bible – and the greatest effect on modern Western
civilisation than any texts including the
Bible. The scandal is that so few people today have even heard of them.
They are a collection known as the Hermetica,
setting out an uncompromisingly magical and mystical philosophy and cosmology. Their name comes from their
attribution to the legendary Egyptian teacher, Hermes Trismegistus
(‘Thrice-Great Hermes’). According to the Hermetica, he was a descendant of the
god of that name – Hermes in Greek, identified with the Egyptian god of
learning, Thoth, scribe to the gods.
In medieval Europe, with the exception
of the one treatise Asclepius, they had been lost, thanks to the
fourth-century crackdown on pagan learning by Christian zealots. However, the
books survived in the Middle East, becoming the foundation for the famously
advanced medieval Arab science. All knowledge-hungry Europeans could do was
hope – and pray? – that they might be rediscovered.
Eventually they were. In 1463 an agent
of the great patron of the early Renaissance, Cosimo de Medici, returned to
Florence with a set of 14 Hermetic treatises, written in Greek, which he had
acquired in Macedonia. Famously, Cosimo’s top scholar, Marsilio Ficino, was
working on the first translation of the complete works of Plato into Latin –
but Cosimo, beside himself with excitement at the new discovery, ordered him to
drop it in favour of the Hermetic books.
Through his translation – the Corpus Hermeticum – and allied
esoteric writings, Ficino is a major figure in the restoration of Hermeticism,
setting it at the heart of the Italian Renaissance. And thanks to the
sensational new technology of the printing press, the Hermetic books fomented
the greatest furore among European intelligentsia. It is impossible to
overstate their impact, both then and much, much later. Hermeticism influenced
everyone from Leonardo da Vinci to Shakespeare, and can be said without
exaggeration to have kick-started the Renaissance. But the Hermetic
books’ significance has always been downplayed by academics, particularly
historians of science and philosophy.
[ now
why did I not know this and why did you not know this? I continue to be incensed by the historical
suppression of important information and texts throughout the centuries by any
number of politically powerful zeolots. –
arclein ]
The Hermetic works were so enthralling
largely because they were believed to preserve the wisdom of the most ancient
period of the Egyptian civilisation, that of the pyramid builders, predating
even the Old Testament. But the most important reason for their huge impact was
the image of humankind they presented – diametrically opposite to
Man-the-doomed-worm so beloved of the Vatican.
According to the Corpus Hermeticum human
beings are brilliant, amazing creatures of unlimited potential. Treatise X
even declares that “the human is a godlike living thing,”1 reinforced by the
Hermetic adage ‘Magnum miraculum est homo’ (‘Man is a great miracle’). This
also applies to women: the Hermetic tradition had great respect for the
feminine – a reason by itself for the Catholic Church’s horrified reaction to
this audacious philosophy.
Although to the Church it was bad
enough to promote ideas of a divine-spirited Man, to include women as
inherently god-like was considerably worse. Some clerics were still debating
whether they had souls, and here come these vile pagans with outrageous beliefs
that women were dazzling beings of ultimate light…
[ Today
we forget that barbarian patriarchy ruled until relatively recently and that
all institutions bent hugely with it. Thus
it is no point in even blaming the church per se when cultural survival gave
zero choice but to comply. Yet this was
the practical core of the Christian revolution itself – arclein ]
Many authors have written at length
about the Hermetica’s influence in generating the surge of self-confidence that
inspired the great flowering of art and literature that is the Renaissance. We,
however, take it further and link this Hermetic epiphany with the history
of science.
Copernicus’ ‘Visible God’
The Scientific Revolution famously
began with Nicolas Copernicus’ On
the Revolution of the Celestial Spheres (1543), which set out the sensational
theory that the Earth circles the Sun and not the other way round. But where
did he get the idea?
A rather large clue is there on the
very page showing his celebrated diagram of the Earth and other planets
orbiting the Sun. Just four lines below, he explicitly references the
Hermetica in relation to the metaphysical implications of the diagram, quoting
a passage where Hermes Trismegistus describes the Sun as the ‘visible god’.
This is no coincidence. All Copernicus’ radical notions
can be found in the Hermetica.
Copernicus’ famous proposition is found
several times in the Corpus
Hermeticum, for example, in Treatise XVI: “For the Sun is situated at
the centre of the cosmos, wearing it like a crown.”2 And “Around the Sun are the six spheres that depend
from it: the sphere of the fixed stars, the six of the planets, and the one that
surrounds the Earth.”3 ‘Spheres’
correspond to our ‘orbits’…
Essentially, Copernicus was claiming to
have found mathematical and physical proof for principles that are set out –
without proof – in the Hermetic books. Contemporary Hermeticists certainly
regarded him as a hero for vindicating their sacred texts.
The Hermetic influence spread and
spread. There isn’t a major character in the Scientific Revolution whowasn’t steeped in the tradition:
Kepler, Tycho Brahe, William Gilbert, William Harvey, Leibniz. The list even
includes the likes of Galileo and Francis Bacon, generally considered
proto-reductionists.
The list of the discoveries either
taken directly from the Hermetica or discovered indirectly by applying its
basic principles to particular problems is truly impressive. Apart from the
world-changing theory of heliocentricity, they include:
The
circulation of the blood
The
Earth as a magnet
The
concepts of an infinite universe and that the stars are in fact distant suns
The
idea of other inhabited worlds, some with more advanced inhabitants
The
basic principles of computer science and information theory
Most
of these were actually developed by the great Hermetic genius Giordano Bruno,
as we will explain in our next article.
Perhaps the Hermetica’s greatest – but
most deliberately downplayed – impact was on the work of Isaac Newton who first
put forward the theory of gravity and the other laws of motion in his Principia Mathematica in 1687: the apotheosis of the Scientific
Revolution and the real start of the modern world. However, although his
admirers today tend to humour his obsession with alchemy – usually very
condescendingly – the extent to which he was influenced by Hermeticism is still
rarely mentioned.
Briefly, by Newton’s day the new
reductionist, mechanistic thinking developed by René Descartes in the
mid-seventeenth century was all the rage in scientific circles. Undoubtedly
Newton began his own academic career as a mechanist but in the mid-1670s he
became heavily influenced by a group of philosophers at Cambridge University
known as the Cambridge Platonists.
In fact these ‘Platonists’ were the
spiritual heirs of Ficino’s Academy in Florence, founded on Hermetic principles at the very
beginning of the Renaissance, the initiators of a magical brotherhood that
transmitted the Hermetic tradition from Florence to Cambridge, and to Newton…
And they changed his thinking – but in the opposite way to what is usually
claimed. American historian of science and Newton biographer Richard S. Westfall,
wrote that, as a result of his contact with the Cambridge group “the Hermetic
influence bade fair to dominate his picture of nature at the expense of the
mechanical.”4Instead
of moving from magic to mechanics, he moved from mechanics to magic.
A few, such as Westfall, now
acknowledge that Newton’s breakthroughs came from applying the Hermetic
principles – to understand the mystery of gravity, for example.
Newton
didn’t make his great discoveries despite his
occult beliefs, but because of
them.
The same is true of all the great
figures of the Scientific Revolution – really the Hermetic Revolution – a very different picture from steady
march of rationalism painted by the likes of Dawkins. Science’s real origins
were occult and therefore, according to the modern misunderstanding,
irredeemably irrational. And deeply embarrassing.
It was only after Newton that science
as we know it emerged, through the gradual separation of Hermeticism from the
scientific method. History was then rewritten to pretend the magic had never
been there in the first place, or that it was only ever a derisory novelty.
However, it was the magic that did the
trick. It’s often stated that if Newton had never written the Principiathe modern technological
world would not exist – but the fact is if he had never read the Hermetica
he would never have written the Principia.
For that alone we owe the ancient texts a huge debt. But did these
momentously influential books really come from ancient Egypt?
Out of Egypt
As we saw above, when they were
rediscovered everybody believed the Hermetic books originated at the most
venerable period of the Egyptian civilisation, the pyramid age. Depending on
one’s viewpoint, they were either humanity’s purest wisdom or devil-inspired
pagan occultism, but either way their immense antiquity was accepted.
Then in 1614 the French scholar Isaac
Casaubon compared the Hermetica’s language and style to other Greek texts,
arguing that they were of relatively late composition. He also believed that
the Hermetic writers had borrowed from Greek philosophy and sections of the New
Testament, concluding they were a second- or third-century hoax, although – to
him, laudably – one that was intended to bring Egyptian pagans to Christianity.
Hermeticism’s enemies, particularly among
French Catholics (then fiercely combating its academic influence) seized on
Casaubon’s work as ammunition. Meanwhile, Hermeticists, naturally, were slower
to acknowledge his reasoning. Although accepting his linguistic arguments, many
– particularly the Cambridge Platonists – argued that, while the books may have
been written during
the Greek period, their ideas were
much older.
While most historians still agree that
the Hermetica came from Egypt during the period of Graeco-Roman domination,
they now only accept the part of Casaubon’s case based on the style,
considering his conclusion that the Hermetic writers borrowed from the New
Testament a particular howler. In fact, it is now known that the gnostic
theology in question pre-dated Christianity (although Casaubon couldn’t have
known that). The consensus now is that the texts were written a few centuries
earlier than Causabon thought. But when were their ideas first developed?
The Hermetic books are clearly an
Egyptian and Greek mix. As western
academia has always been biased in favour of classical Greece, regarding it as
the fount of all things worthwhile in philosophy and science, the Greek parts
have been traditionally considered more important than the Egyptian. However,
during the twentieth century it became increasingly obvious that native
Egyptian ideas played a larger part than previously thought. Today it’s not a
question of if there’s
an Egyptian influence, but of how
much. One faction even argues that the books are mostly Egyptian, with ideas from
Plato and other Greek thinkers being crowbarred in only to help explain the
underlying concepts to that particular audience.5
The evidence is considerable: the
books fit the Egyptian model of wisdom literature more obviously than the Greek
tradition; the authors remain anonymous and attribute their works to Hermes
– typically Egyptian – whereas Greek writers sought personal celebrity; the
texts use the Egyptian, rather than Greek, system of astrology.
Perhaps most compelling, though, is the
fact that the Hermetica are not only populated with Egyptian gods and goddesses
– either ‘straight’ Egyptian deities such as Isis, Thoth and Horus or Greek
gods that were specially venerated in Egypt such as Asclepius and Hermes
himself – but also rely on Egyptian concepts of divinity. Although Greek Hermes
is customarily identified with the Egyptian wisdom-god Thoth, scribe of the
gods, the two did not share identical characteristics – and Hermes
Trismegistus’ are those of Thoth, not Hermes.
The honorific ‘Trismegistus’ also makes
sense as a Greek rendering of a characteristically Egyptian custom. In Egypt a
person or deity was venerated simply by repeating the glyph for ‘great’, either
twice or, for exceptional greatness, three times. It would be natural for a
Greek translator to render a text literally reading ‘great great great’ as
‘three times great’ – or ‘Trismegistus’.
Indeed, the practice seems to have been
reserved for Thoth himself (left). An inscription from Saqqara in 160 BCE calls
him “the three times great” – repeating the Demotic character for ‘great’ three
times.6 Not
only is this the earliest known inscription using the ‘three times great’ form,
but it comes from the period of Greek domination when the Hermetic books were
being composed, making the link to Thrice-great Hermes even more compelling.
The case for a native Egyptian
influence on the Hermetica is now so persuasive that many specialists believe
the books originated with a specific Egyptian wisdom-cult – which obviously
honoured Thoth. Borrowing ideas from Greeks such as Plato would have helped
make alien Egyptian concepts seem more familiar, and ensuring Egyptian
traditions were inveigled into the Greek conquerors’ own literature would have
effectively preserved them for posterity. But who created the Hermetica?
From the City of the Sun
A clue comes from another movement that
emerged in Greek-dominated Egypt and which is closely entwined with Hermeticism
– and may be regarded as Hermeticism’s esoteric twin.
Academics may have called this school,
off-puttingly, ‘Neoplatonism’ – because it borrowed some concepts from Plato’s
more mystical writings – but the movement is entrancingly profound and very
Egyptian: a magical system intended to reconnect directly with God during life
– rather than after death – and empower the practitioner.
It is known that the school was founded
on the works of the Egyptian philosopher Plotinus (c.205-270 CE), pupil of the
mysterious Egyptian sage Ammonius Saccas. And although originally it was
thought to be entirely Greek-based, the presence of other influences, including
native Egyptian, was acknowledged. And now some argue that the core ideas are
wholly Egyptian and the Greek parts just a veneer.
One of the main proponents of the
latter is the German-born American professor of religious history Karl W.
Luckert, who argues in Egyptian
Light and Hebrew Fire (1991) that rather than Neoplatonic the
philosophy should be called ‘neo-Egyptian’. He declares: “Plotinus has given us
Egyptian religion [and] theology in the linguistic garb of Hellenic
philosophy.”7 The
most obvious example is Plotinus’ account of a two-part soul, corresponding
exactly with the well-known Egyptian ka and ba,
but failing to match any Greek beliefs.
And now there’s a huge amount of
evidence that Neoplatonism preserves spiritual traditions that go right back to
the very foundations of the Egyptian civilisation. Luckert has found compelling
parallels between the Neoplatonic writings and the beliefs expressed in the
famous Pyramid Texts. The oldest known religious writings in the world,
these are inscribed on the walls of pyramids constructed between 2500 and 2200
BCE, but are unquestionably just examples of writings that originated many
centuries earlier. In fact, they encapsulate the beliefs of the religion whose
cult centre was at Heliopolis, the City of the Sun, close to Giza – which
inspired the building of the great pyramids.
The similarities between Neoplatonism
and Hermeticism have been obvious since Ficino’s day, and clearly they are
simply alternative expressions of the same worldview. For example, Iamblichus
of Syria (c.245-c.325 CE), labelled a Neoplatonist philosopher by contemporary
historians, opens his masterwork On
the Egyptian Mysteries with an appeal to Hermes “who presides over
true knowledge of the gods,”8 showing
the close connection with Hermeticism. Significantly, too, Iamblichus
emphasises the custom of Egyptian writers of attributing their books to Hermes
while remaining anonymous.
Given the close association of
Hermeticism and Neoplatonism they obviously share a common source. And if
Neoplatonism derives from ancient Heliopolis – then so must the Hermetica.
Indeed, a comparison of the latter’s core spiritual and cosmological ideas does
reveal them to be very similar, if not identical, to the Pyramid Texts.
To the Heliopolitans, the universe was
not merely an emanation from the
creator-god Atum but also as an emanation of Atum. This fits both the Hermetic concept of the cosmos
as God’s thought and the part-divinity of humanity. It also parallels the
Hermetic belief in an evolving, expanding and growing universe, becoming ever
more complex and multidimensional as it develops from the spiritual to the
material. [ I could
hardly describe cloud cosmology better – arclein ]
And in the Heliopolitan system, as the
cosmos evolves Atum generates eight other deities, representing new forces and
levels of complexity, which make up the Great Ennead – nine gods – the most
famous of which are Isis and Osiris, and of which Atum is the chief. But a
second ‘octave’, repeating the pattern on the level of physical matter, is
generated through Isis and Osiris’ child Horus, who has the same relationship
with the material universe as Atum does to all creation, and is therefore god
of the material world. Not only does this seem to be the origin of Gnostic (and
Platonic) ideas of the Demiurge or lesser god of this world, but also, through
Horus’ association with the Sun, of two important ideas that Copernicus picked
up on. The first is the Sun as the ‘visible god’ (as opposed to the invisible
one, Atum). The second is that, since Atum is the centre of the entire
universe, the Sun must be at the centre of our solar system.
Although Egypt’s most ancient religion,
the Heliopolitan tradition survived throughout the civilisation’s
three-millennia history. In early Egypt mystical and religious wisdom were not
separate from practical, technical and scientific knowledge. Both were the
preserves of priests, a practice that continued through to classical times, as
witnessed by the association of the great libraries, such as that of
Alexandria, with temples. Even by the time the Greek traveller Herodotus
visited Heliopolis in the fifth century BCE it was still considered to be
“where the most learned of the Egyptians are to be found.”9 The famed third-century
BCE priest and sage Manetho (‘Beloved of Thoth’) was a priest of Heliopolis –
who worked to preserve his land’s religious beliefs by making them more
accessible to the new Greek rulers, the very same motive ascribed to the
writers of the Hermetica. But there is another important clue to the origins of
the Hermetica at the very beginning of the civilisation’s history, in the
person of the earliest recorded priest of Heliopolis.
This was Imhotep, priest of Heliopolis
and the genius who conceived and oversaw the building of the first great
pyramid, the Step Pyramid of Saqqara, in 2650 BCE. He was so endowed with
genius and divine gifts that he was worshipped by later generations – making
him the perfect role model for the Hermetic belief that humans can achieve
godhood through their endeavours.
Imhotep’s cult survived through the
ages. The second-century-BCE inscription to ‘three times great Thoth’ discussed
above was written by a priest named Hor (Horus) who belonged to the ‘chapel of
Imhotep’ in the city of Heliopolis.
Imhotep also lives on, thinly
disguised, in the pages of the Hermetica. The major character of the treatises
is Hermes’ pupil, Asclepius – a descendant of Asclepius, Greek god of healing.
The Greeks identified Asclepius with Imhotep – and in the Hermetic work that
bears his name, the identification with Imhotep is heavily reinforced.
So the latest scholarship vindicates
the belief of the Renaissance Hermeticists such as Ficino and Bruno that their
revered texts contained the wisdom of Egypt’s pyramid age. But this also means
that the Scientific Revolution – and therefore the whole basis of modern
science – was also inspired by the authentic wisdom of the ancient Egyptians.
Where they might have
got it from is quite another question, sadly beyond the scope of this article…
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Footnotes
1. Brian P. Copenhaver, Hermetica: The Greek Corpus Hermeticum and
the Latin Asclepius in a New English Translation, Cambridge University
Press, 2003, 36.
2. Ibid., 59.
3. Ibid., 61.
4. Richard S. Westfall, ‘Newton and the
Hermetic Tradition’, in Allen G. Debus, Science, Medicine and Society in the Renaissance, Science
History Publications, 1972, vol. II, 194-5.
5. A major figure in this development
was the French orientalist Jean-Pierre Mahé, in his Hermès en Haute-Egypt, published in
two volumes in 1978 and 1982. Another important study is British professor of
antiquity Garth Fowden’s The
Egyptian Hermes (1986).
6. See J.D. Ray, The Archive of Hor, Egypt Exploration
Society, 1976.
7. Karl W. Luckert, Egyptian Light and Hebrew Fire: Theological
and Philosophical Roots of Christendom in Evolutionary Perspective,
State University of New York Press, 1991, 257.
8. Iamblichus (trans. Clarke, Dillon
and Hershbell), De mysteriis,
Brill, 2004, 5.
9. Herodotus (trans. de Sélincourt and Burn), The Histories, Penguin, 1972, 130.
LYNN PICKNETT & CLIVE PRINCE’s joint career began with Turin Shroud: How Leonardo Da Vinci Fooled
History and – eight books later – they published The Forbidden Universe. They are best
known for their 1997 The Templar
Revelation, which Dan Brown acknowledged as the primary inspiration
for The Da Vinci Code. As
a reward for their contribution they were given cameos in the movie (on the
London bus). They also give talks to an international audience. Lynn &
Clive both live in South London. Their website is www.picknettprince.com.
The above article appeared in New Dawn No. 129
(November-December 2011).
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