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In March 1991, Random House published The Seeker’s Handbook – The Complete Guide to Spiritual Pathfinding (TSH). The book was carefully timed to serve the need it defined, a need I identified in the social-spiritual trends of that moment: namely, the need for orientation to, and clarification of, the options presented in the New Age movement (NAM), loosely known as alternative spirituality.
The dawn of the 1990s saw that movement peaking. My intention with this book was to offer a pathfinding tool, something like an intellectual compass for navigating through the huge array of books, teachers, programs, and practices that had been proliferating massively since the 1960s.
To that end, I proposed the metaphor of the labyrinth to describe the multiple winding pathways facing modern truth-seekers. I also suggested that in our time, due to the very multiplicity of options for spiritual development – everything from Baha’i to Buddhism to body work, from alchemy to zen – the task of pathfinding itself becomes an art. Sorting out what principle, program, or person you are going to follow in undertaking a spiritual practice to guide your life is on its own terms a challenging practice, regardless of which practice you finally adopt! This observation is as true now, I would say, as it was when I wrote the book.
The Hermetica
It has not always been so, of course. I dedicated a long section of TSH to describe “how the radio came to the beach.” That is to say, how it developed historically that Western society today faces such a vast range of options for self-development along spiritual, metaphysical, and mystical lines. Without going back beyond the Dark Ages to the destruction of the Mysteries – another investigation, covered at length in Not in His Image – I came forward from the Renaissance. The key event that laid the foundation for today’s eclectic New Age spirituality was the discovery of a sheaf of writings entitled the Hermetica. The Lexicon of 1,000 entries in TSH defines Hermetics:
From Greek, Hermes, equivalent to the Egyptian Thoth, the God of writing, calculation and the sacred arts. Loosely, the body of technical and inspirational teachings believed to be derived from the secret schools of the Egyptian Mysteries. Specifically, the corpus of thirteen rare manuscripts introduced into Europe in the 15th century, which opened the way to independent spiritual seeking in the West, especially through disclosure of the concept of theogeny.
The inception of New Age spiritual pathfinding happened in an almost single-handed way due to the influence of a Florentine nobleman, Cosimo de Medici (1389-1464). When he received the Egyptian manuscripts, Cosimo deemed the “ancient wisdom” preserved therein to be of higher value than the Bible, and predating Moses. He instructed Marsilio Ficino, appointed by him to head the Florentine Academy of Arts and Sciences, to translate the Hermetica from Greek into Latin for the edification of the trendy Italian intelligentsia of his court. In that single act, Cosimo initiated a chain of events that led ultimately to the New Age movement of today.
TSH summarises sixteen key themes of the modern alternative spirituality, contrasted to conventional faiths such as Judaism, Christianity (Roman, Protestant, and Orthodox), and Islam: 1. ancient wisdom, 2. Gaia, goddess revival, 3. shamanism, 4. masters, 5. planetisation, 6. channeling, 7. holistics and healing arts, 8. East/West studies, 9. martial arts and the warrior path, 10. paranormal reality and psychic powers, 11. reincarnation, 12. earth changes, 13. service and group effort (Aquarian idealism), 14. metahistory (parallel or secret history), 15. para-physics, chaos/complexity theory, physics of consciousness, 16. co-creation.
In the context of this essay, the final theme has a telling import. In the ultimate sense, it could be said that the Hermetica introduced two closely linked themes into Western society, and from this dyad all other aspects and ramifications of the New Age outlook are generated. These themes are co-creation, “you create your own reality,” and theogeny, “you become as gods, knowing good and evil.” Theogeny is a made-up word I propose, not to be confused with theogony, meaning an account of the origin and genealogy of the gods – as found in Hesiod’s poem, Theogony, for instance. Theogeny means “the birth or genesis (-geneos) of divine potential (theo-) in the human species.” The assertion of this god-like potential and the call to cultivate it, is the hallmark of New Age philosophy and ethics at its best. It is also the key point of heresy that distinguishes alternative spirituality from conventional faith.
Not Illuminati
Gnostics of the Mysteries designated the root of human potential by the Greek word nous, “divine intelligence,” basis of the term noetic. The Mystery Schools were a network of regional campuses where illumined teachers called telestai, “those who are aimed,” taught a vast range of sciences, arts, and vocations. These illumined teachers were most certainly NOT illuminati-type psychopaths bent on mind control and social engineering. They were dedicated teachers who had attained an advanced realisation of the nature of consciousness (noesis) and the consciousness of nature (epitomised in a living being, the goddess Sophia, also called Sapientia). In Fragments of a Faith Forgotten, Theosophic scholar G.R.S. Mead restated “the persistent tradition in connection with all the great Mystery-institutions was that their several founders were the introducers of all the arts of civilisation… they were the teachers of the infant races [who] taught the arts, the nature of the gods, the unseen worlds, cosmology, anthropology, etc.”
Mead’s view is echoed by S. Angus, author of The Mystery-Religions: “The Mysteries were the last redoubts of Paganism to fall. Prior to that their adherents were the educators of the ancient world.”
Today it is widely argued that the Mystery Schools of pre-Christian antiquity were think tanks for the predecessors of the current CEOs of the New World Order (NWO), psychopathic control-freaks who aim to deceive, divide, and enslave humankind. Investigators such as David Icke and Michael Tsarion expostulate endlessly on the nefarious doings of the NWO gang, making them out to be dazzling adepts of occultism who hold the world under their spell. Unfortunately, Icke, Tsarion and others consistently attribute NWO methods and aims to Paganism (grossly and ignorantly equated with Satanism) and the Mystery Schools. Nothing could be further from the truth.
At this crucial moment in human history, when the moment comes to defeat the NWO agenda, it is a grotesque mistake to associate the globalist psychopaths with benevolent teachers of the Pagan Mystery Schools. There does not exist one shred of evidence linking the latter-day NWO agenda, derived from the Bavarian Illuminati of 1776, to those sacred institutions of education and enlightenment. I have repeatedly emphasised that self-styled detectives of the NWO agenda, having failed to do their homework, wrongly equate the rites of theocratic empowerment in ancient times with initiatory rites in the Mysteries. But the aim of the Mysteries was connection with the Great Goddess, Sophia, embodied in the earth, not social engineering under the insane presumptions of theocracy. Failure to make this distinction has mislead many investigators, not to mention those who uncritically follow them.
The fact that some modern (alleged or self-declared) Illuminati might attribute their origins to the Mysteries does not mean it is so. In reality, the distinguishing mark of the Illuminati today is the patent error, not to say insanity, of their views on themselves, their power, and their origins! The Illuminati represent the extreme distortion of human egotism toward behaviours of psychotic deviance that threaten all life on earth. That behaviour identifies the Illuminati, regardless of what principles and pretensions are assigned to them, and no matter what ancient pedigree they attribute to themselves. That behaviour is what has to end right now if humanity is to survive and thrive in an “Aquarian” world based on social enlightenment, harmony with nature, and mutual aid.
n March 1991, Random House published The Seeker’s Handbook – The Complete Guide to Spiritual Pathfinding (TSH). The book was carefully timed to serve the need it defined, a need I identified in the social-spiritual trends of that moment: namely, the need for orientation to, and clarification of, the options presented in the New Age movement (NAM), loosely known as alternative spirituality.
The dawn of the 1990s saw that movement peaking. My intention with this book was to offer a pathfinding tool, something like an intellectual compass for navigating through the huge array of books, teachers, programs, and practices that had been proliferating massively since the 1960s.
To that end, I proposed the metaphor of the labyrinth to describe the multiple winding pathways facing modern truth-seekers. I also suggested that in our time, due to the very multiplicity of options for spiritual development – everything from Baha’i to Buddhism to body work, from alchemy to zen – the task of pathfinding itself becomes an art. Sorting out what principle, program, or person you are going to follow in undertaking a spiritual practice to guide your life is on its own terms a challenging practice, regardless of which practice you finally adopt! This observation is as true now, I would say, as it was when I wrote the book.
The Hermetica
It has not always been so, of course. I dedicated a long section of TSH to describe “how the radio came to the beach.” That is to say, how it developed historically that Western society today faces such a vast range of options for self-development along spiritual, metaphysical, and mystical lines. Without going back beyond the Dark Ages to the destruction of the Mysteries – another investigation, covered at length in Not in His Image – I came forward from the Renaissance. The key event that laid the foundation for today’s eclectic New Age spirituality was the discovery of a sheaf of writings entitled the Hermetica. The Lexicon of 1,000 entries in TSH defines Hermetics:
From Greek, Hermes, equivalent to the Egyptian Thoth, the God of writing, calculation and the sacred arts. Loosely, the body of technical and inspirational teachings believed to be derived from the secret schools of the Egyptian Mysteries. Specifically, the corpus of thirteen rare manuscripts introduced into Europe in the 15th century, which opened the way to independent spiritual seeking in the West, especially through disclosure of the concept of theogeny.
The inception of New Age spiritual pathfinding happened in an almost single-handed way due to the influence of a Florentine nobleman, Cosimo de Medici (1389-1464). When he received the Egyptian manuscripts, Cosimo deemed the “ancient wisdom” preserved therein to be of higher value than the Bible, and predating Moses. He instructed Marsilio Ficino, appointed by him to head the Florentine Academy of Arts and Sciences, to translate the Hermetica from Greek into Latin for the edification of the trendy Italian intelligentsia of his court. In that single act, Cosimo initiated a chain of events that led ultimately to the New Age movement of today.
TSH summarises sixteen key themes of the modern alternative spirituality, contrasted to conventional faiths such as Judaism, Christianity (Roman, Protestant, and Orthodox), and Islam: 1. ancient wisdom, 2. Gaia, goddess revival, 3. shamanism, 4. masters, 5. planetisation, 6. channeling, 7. holistics and healing arts, 8. East/West studies, 9. martial arts and the warrior path, 10. paranormal reality and psychic powers, 11. reincarnation, 12. earth changes, 13. service and group effort (Aquarian idealism), 14. metahistory (parallel or secret history), 15. para-physics, chaos/complexity theory, physics of consciousness, 16. co-creation.
In the context of this essay, the final theme has a telling import. In the ultimate sense, it could be said that the Hermetica introduced two closely linked themes into Western society, and from this dyad all other aspects and ramifications of the New Age outlook are generated. These themes are co-creation, “you create your own reality,” and theogeny, “you become as gods, knowing good and evil.” Theogeny is a made-up word I propose, not to be confused with theogony, meaning an account of the origin and genealogy of the gods – as found in Hesiod’s poem, Theogony, for instance. Theogeny means “the birth or genesis (-geneos) of divine potential (theo-) in the human species.” The assertion of this god-like potential and the call to cultivate it, is the hallmark of New Age philosophy and ethics at its best. It is also the key point of heresy that distinguishes alternative spirituality from conventional faith.
Not Illuminati
Gnostics of the Mysteries designated the root of human potential by the Greek word nous, “divine intelligence,” basis of the term noetic. The Mystery Schools were a network of regional campuses where illumined teachers called telestai, “those who are aimed,” taught a vast range of sciences, arts, and vocations. These illumined teachers were most certainly NOT illuminati-type psychopaths bent on mind control and social engineering. They were dedicated teachers who had attained an advanced realisation of the nature of consciousness (noesis) and the consciousness of nature (epitomised in a living being, the goddess Sophia, also called Sapientia). In Fragments of a Faith Forgotten, Theosophic scholar G.R.S. Mead restated “the persistent tradition in connection with all the great Mystery-institutions was that their several founders were the introducers of all the arts of civilisation… they were the teachers of the infant races [who] taught the arts, the nature of the gods, the unseen worlds, cosmology, anthropology, etc.”
Mead’s view is echoed by S. Angus, author of The Mystery-Religions: “The Mysteries were the last redoubts of Paganism to fall. Prior to that their adherents were the educators of the ancient world.”
Today it is widely argued that the Mystery Schools of pre-Christian antiquity were think tanks for the predecessors of the current CEOs of the New World Order (NWO), psychopathic control-freaks who aim to deceive, divide, and enslave humankind. Investigators such as David Icke and Michael Tsarion expostulate endlessly on the nefarious doings of the NWO gang, making them out to be dazzling adepts of occultism who hold the world under their spell. Unfortunately, Icke, Tsarion and others consistently attribute NWO methods and aims to Paganism (grossly and ignorantly equated with Satanism) and the Mystery Schools. Nothing could be further from the truth.
At this crucial moment in human history, when the moment comes to defeat the NWO agenda, it is a grotesque mistake to associate the globalist psychopaths with benevolent teachers of the Pagan Mystery Schools. There does not exist one shred of evidence linking the latter-day NWO agenda, derived from the Bavarian Illuminati of 1776, to those sacred institutions of education and enlightenment. I have repeatedly emphasised that self-styled detectives of the NWO agenda, having failed to do their homework, wrongly equate the rites of theocratic empowerment in ancient times with initiatory rites in the Mysteries. But the aim of the Mysteries was connection with the Great Goddess, Sophia, embodied in the earth, not social engineering under the insane presumptions of theocracy. Failure to make this distinction has mislead many investigators, not to mention those who uncritically follow them.
The fact that some modern (alleged or self-declared) Illuminati might attribute their origins to the Mysteries does not mean it is so. In reality, the distinguishing mark of the Illuminati today is the patent error, not to say insanity, of their views on themselves, their power, and their origins! The Illuminati represent the extreme distortion of human egotism toward behaviours of psychotic deviance that threaten all life on earth. That behaviour identifies the Illuminati, regardless of what principles and pretensions are assigned to them, and no matter what ancient pedigree they attribute to themselves. That behaviour is what has to end right now if humanity is to survive and thrive in an “Aquarian” world based on social enlightenment, harmony with nature, and mutual aid.
John Lamb Lash - https://www.newdawnmagazine.com/articles/illuminati-hell-or-aquarian-heaven
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