crossoflight
03-06-2009, 07:15 AM
Blurb and extract from 'Dark Knights of the Solar Cross' by G.B. Smith. Impressive scholarship or a dog's dinner? What do you think?
Dark Knights of the Solar Cross
Geoffrey Basil Smith
Logos Press 1997
At last the unvarnished, essential truth about the Theosophical Society, the Golden Dawn, the O.T.O., the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor, and many other occult organizations which have so influenced, sometimes to drastic effect, the cultural and socio-political landscapes of the 20th century. This is Conspiracy Research without Paranoia! Lucid and crystal clear, Geoffrey Basil Smith is a veteran researcher whose time has come; this book is absolutely the last word on the history of modern occultism.
Afterword
As I write, Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh have just issued yet another book on Hermeticism, ‘The Elixir and the Stone’. In it, the pair write of how marginalized the subject has become since the Enlightenment (i.e., in comparison with its relatively mainstream hey-day in the Renaissance).
In this book, I have given an overview of Eastern and Western occult underground streams which bring us reasonably up-to-date as to where the main ‘modern’ propagators of the subject stand. But to attempt to date Hermeticism is to make absolute and Eternal Truths temporal. For Hermetists of all ages speak a common language of symbolism, and these symbols are perfectly scientific in so far as they have a universally applicable meaning.
When I was deluged by Hermetic and occult symbols in dreams, visions and imaginations during the 1970s and early 80s, I had no problem deciphering their message because all Hermetic Adepts have done so throughout the centuries, and this according to a Universal Key.
Some of the symbols – the smooth Ashlar, for example, and solar-phallic imagery – I found in Masonic High Degree systems. Others – for instance, the eclipsed sun and the falling star – I found in Masonry and the Bible. A circular rainbow I inwardly experienced was discovered in a painting by Crowley, a Lion-headed ‘goddess’ found in Egyptian mythology and the Golden Dawn, the Hanged Man in the Tarot cards, the Green Snake in Goethe, a severed head in Rosicrucianism and Masonry, ‘Sophia’ in Kabbalah and Alchemy, and the true meaning of ‘White Eagle’ was given by the Anthroposophist Walter Stein after Basil Valentine, the Alchemist. And so on.
What are the explanations for all this wonderfully bestowed and gratefully received numinosity? The Analytical Psychologist Carl Jung suggested the ‘Archetypes’ of the ‘Collective Unconscious’, ultimately reducible to the psyche as ‘carbon’. But I hold to the view of the French esotericist Rene Guenon who says that the profane reductionism of ‘Depth Psychology’ completely misses out on the final, spiritual dimension of these gifts which, to the knower, speak of the Transcendent Reality back of our mundane world experience.
There are so-called ‘Rosicrucians’ like Rudolf Steiner who condemn this type of Symbolic Hermeticism as it has been expounded in the ‘Modern Occult Revival’ (beginning c. 1850s) by authors like the French men Eliphas Levi and ‘Papus’ Encausse. But a deeper and more initiated former Anthroposophist Valentin Tomberg (who, like Stein, represented the best in the Society before being excluded) embraced the work of Levi, Papus and their many companions in the revival period – and I agree with Tomberg. My own Hermetic initiation demands and confirms this.
In my experience, the Hermetic Adepts (call them the ‘Great White Brotherhood’ or what you will) initiate their pupils via highly charged symbols expressing the fullest Hermetic Truths in images that are far greater in impact than words. And as long as one also maintains one’s ego-bound common-sense attitude to everyday life, matters do not go awry.
Mistakes may have been made but what cannot be negated is the ‘blood, sweat and tears’ shed by men like Papus and his successors who did so much to maintain the Hermetic Tradition when the subject was so peripheral to society’s contemporary interests.
Yes, Herr Dr. Steiner, Tomberg is correct: the common language of all Hermetists is Symbolism, universal and always understandable by those who take the trouble to read what so many others have said about the ageless cipher. In his relative youth (as an occultist), Steiner had been eager to dismiss much, for example, of Yarker’s Ancient and Primitive Rite of Memphis and Mizraim Masonry (as did Crowley and Eugen Grosche of the Brotherhood of Saturn). And yet this Rite, like many others in the Masonic High Degrees, contains much Truth of an everlasting nature.
True clairvoyants and even so-called ‘spiritualists’ may claim to see a more flowing and living stream of spiritual reality (and perhaps they do) but it is not that of the School of Hermetic Science.
An establishment on the lines of the latter was set up by Papus and echoes of it continued in Reuss’s O.T.O. (see the Constitution of 1917). This is what the Oriental Templars were originally intended to be. Kellner’s vision was of a Masonic Academy in which questing brethren could become familiar with all Masonic systems (and it really does not matter whether you are officially a Mason). Reuss expanded this view to include most of the occult societies and their teachings too. What a tragedy that the O.T.O. got bogged down, not only with the Nazi-like psychopathic tenets of Crowley’s Thelema (which Reuss tempered and later completely rejected), but also with over-exaggerating an unnecessary and unproved ‘sex magical’ secret. The O.T.O. could have been every bit as all encompassing as a NON-Thelemic A.A. or Fraternitas Saturni. Then the White School would have prospered!
Finally, the reader of my second book will have noted that I no longer embrace the Eastern (Blavatsky-derived) schools of occultism but now prefer the Hermetic Adepts of the Western Tradition. World-negating Eastern views (especially the Neo-Buddhistic) no longer seem suitable (if they ever were) to the modern Western world, a point hammered home by many occultists in the past (including Peter Davidson and the H.B. of L., Steiner, Reuss, Crowley, Mathers, Kingsford, Papus, Jung, Oliphant, Fortune and others).
In seeking out the Secret Societies (not so secret anymore) the Seeker after Truth expects to find a ready made programme guaranteed to lead him to the Path of Enlightenment. The Theosophical Society…the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn…the O.T.O. (and many more) – all appear to offer the possibility of total Initiation to the aspiring neophyte.
In my personal experience, this is not so.
All groups may enjoy the benefit of symbolic systems which do, in part, speak of the Truth. But none have the whole Truth and there is always dross amidst the gold (much dross).
By and large, the greatest Truth is that contained in societies which emphasise the Hermetic Philosophy will all its attendant symbology. We are speaking of some of the symbols mentioned by myself in the earlier part of this conclusion. The Alchemists and authentic Rosenkreuzers have provided the bulk of these symbols in their teachings.
As I have stated earlier, there must be no reductionism in relation to these symbols a la Jung. Jung was indeed a great collector, purveyor and explainer of these symbols but missed out by not regarding them as essential pointers to Transcendent Spirituality (the symbols themselves are not Spirit as such but come from Spirit, although certainly not in the Spiritualists’ sense). This lack of emphasis on Spirit was commented on by both Steiner and Guenon (who nevertheless both adhered to other world views/personal interpretations with which this author cannot agree).
Hermetic-Alchemical-Rosicrucian symbology is certainly supra-individual and provides a timeless intimation of immortality – eternal life (no less)!
It is as if certain qualities of the human soul were perfectly rewarded, acknowledged and encouraged by specific symbols. Ethical virtues, achieved by self-sacrifice, for example, are a case in point. The prizes are not won easily. Sacrifice is suffering. The rewards – bestowed in dream and vision – provide spiritual certainty for the Hermeticist, knowledge not faith (which is, after all, intellectual sacrifice).
The initial eruption of the Transcendent Event is seemingly irrational but it is left to rationality to decipher the Hermetic Code (with the aid of those who went before) and thereby enable full understanding of the ‘gift’.
In many ways, Freemasonry has become a sort of custodian of some of these symbols. This is particularly the case in the example of the ‘Perfect Ashlar’ which is a form of the Alchemist’s ‘Lapis’ or ‘Philosopher’s Stone’, the key Hermetic symbol and the end result of all esoteric endeavour. This has nothing to do with the debased and vulgarised interpretation of the Stone and its symbols given by the degenerate O.T.O. The Stone is a spiritual acquisition and requires self-sacrifice of the highest ilk. This is amplified by the Masonic depiction of the transformation from ‘Rough Ashlar’ to its perfect successor.
The Philosopher’s Stone is certainly the ‘summum bonnum’ of the Hermetic (inward) Quest – bestowed as a result of high ethical action taken in the external world, and truncated into the form of a ‘cube’ in Masonic ritual.
Since the Stone is the result of any particular personal ‘crucifixion’, the outcome is undoubtedly a ‘Christing’ of the individual concerned. Of course, he or she may – and no doubt being human will – slip in future life but the achievement eternally remains, indelibly printed, as it were, on their soul, recognition from and guarantee of the world of Spirit (which is not the supposed “world” of the Spiritualists who, telepathically reading minds and adding fact to primitive imagination and fancy, as well as the myths of their own traditions, fail to understand Hermeticism).
So, dear patient reader, this book certainly now wishes to pay homage to Paracelsus, Basil Valentine, Henricus Madathnus Theosophus, the authors of the Hermetic Museum and all other Hermetic Adepts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in particular. They are still not to be swallowed whole, of course. Far from it. But the true symbols are embedded within their texts and have continued to be carried in Masonic and occult systems ever since the Middle Ages.
Hopefully, also, this work will have given the true story of contemporary occult movements, thereby allowing the discerning enquirer after Wisdom to further sort out the wheat from the chaff, for much chaff there is!
Dark Knights of the Solar Cross
Geoffrey Basil Smith
Logos Press 1997
At last the unvarnished, essential truth about the Theosophical Society, the Golden Dawn, the O.T.O., the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor, and many other occult organizations which have so influenced, sometimes to drastic effect, the cultural and socio-political landscapes of the 20th century. This is Conspiracy Research without Paranoia! Lucid and crystal clear, Geoffrey Basil Smith is a veteran researcher whose time has come; this book is absolutely the last word on the history of modern occultism.
Afterword
As I write, Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh have just issued yet another book on Hermeticism, ‘The Elixir and the Stone’. In it, the pair write of how marginalized the subject has become since the Enlightenment (i.e., in comparison with its relatively mainstream hey-day in the Renaissance).
In this book, I have given an overview of Eastern and Western occult underground streams which bring us reasonably up-to-date as to where the main ‘modern’ propagators of the subject stand. But to attempt to date Hermeticism is to make absolute and Eternal Truths temporal. For Hermetists of all ages speak a common language of symbolism, and these symbols are perfectly scientific in so far as they have a universally applicable meaning.
When I was deluged by Hermetic and occult symbols in dreams, visions and imaginations during the 1970s and early 80s, I had no problem deciphering their message because all Hermetic Adepts have done so throughout the centuries, and this according to a Universal Key.
Some of the symbols – the smooth Ashlar, for example, and solar-phallic imagery – I found in Masonic High Degree systems. Others – for instance, the eclipsed sun and the falling star – I found in Masonry and the Bible. A circular rainbow I inwardly experienced was discovered in a painting by Crowley, a Lion-headed ‘goddess’ found in Egyptian mythology and the Golden Dawn, the Hanged Man in the Tarot cards, the Green Snake in Goethe, a severed head in Rosicrucianism and Masonry, ‘Sophia’ in Kabbalah and Alchemy, and the true meaning of ‘White Eagle’ was given by the Anthroposophist Walter Stein after Basil Valentine, the Alchemist. And so on.
What are the explanations for all this wonderfully bestowed and gratefully received numinosity? The Analytical Psychologist Carl Jung suggested the ‘Archetypes’ of the ‘Collective Unconscious’, ultimately reducible to the psyche as ‘carbon’. But I hold to the view of the French esotericist Rene Guenon who says that the profane reductionism of ‘Depth Psychology’ completely misses out on the final, spiritual dimension of these gifts which, to the knower, speak of the Transcendent Reality back of our mundane world experience.
There are so-called ‘Rosicrucians’ like Rudolf Steiner who condemn this type of Symbolic Hermeticism as it has been expounded in the ‘Modern Occult Revival’ (beginning c. 1850s) by authors like the French men Eliphas Levi and ‘Papus’ Encausse. But a deeper and more initiated former Anthroposophist Valentin Tomberg (who, like Stein, represented the best in the Society before being excluded) embraced the work of Levi, Papus and their many companions in the revival period – and I agree with Tomberg. My own Hermetic initiation demands and confirms this.
In my experience, the Hermetic Adepts (call them the ‘Great White Brotherhood’ or what you will) initiate their pupils via highly charged symbols expressing the fullest Hermetic Truths in images that are far greater in impact than words. And as long as one also maintains one’s ego-bound common-sense attitude to everyday life, matters do not go awry.
Mistakes may have been made but what cannot be negated is the ‘blood, sweat and tears’ shed by men like Papus and his successors who did so much to maintain the Hermetic Tradition when the subject was so peripheral to society’s contemporary interests.
Yes, Herr Dr. Steiner, Tomberg is correct: the common language of all Hermetists is Symbolism, universal and always understandable by those who take the trouble to read what so many others have said about the ageless cipher. In his relative youth (as an occultist), Steiner had been eager to dismiss much, for example, of Yarker’s Ancient and Primitive Rite of Memphis and Mizraim Masonry (as did Crowley and Eugen Grosche of the Brotherhood of Saturn). And yet this Rite, like many others in the Masonic High Degrees, contains much Truth of an everlasting nature.
True clairvoyants and even so-called ‘spiritualists’ may claim to see a more flowing and living stream of spiritual reality (and perhaps they do) but it is not that of the School of Hermetic Science.
An establishment on the lines of the latter was set up by Papus and echoes of it continued in Reuss’s O.T.O. (see the Constitution of 1917). This is what the Oriental Templars were originally intended to be. Kellner’s vision was of a Masonic Academy in which questing brethren could become familiar with all Masonic systems (and it really does not matter whether you are officially a Mason). Reuss expanded this view to include most of the occult societies and their teachings too. What a tragedy that the O.T.O. got bogged down, not only with the Nazi-like psychopathic tenets of Crowley’s Thelema (which Reuss tempered and later completely rejected), but also with over-exaggerating an unnecessary and unproved ‘sex magical’ secret. The O.T.O. could have been every bit as all encompassing as a NON-Thelemic A.A. or Fraternitas Saturni. Then the White School would have prospered!
Finally, the reader of my second book will have noted that I no longer embrace the Eastern (Blavatsky-derived) schools of occultism but now prefer the Hermetic Adepts of the Western Tradition. World-negating Eastern views (especially the Neo-Buddhistic) no longer seem suitable (if they ever were) to the modern Western world, a point hammered home by many occultists in the past (including Peter Davidson and the H.B. of L., Steiner, Reuss, Crowley, Mathers, Kingsford, Papus, Jung, Oliphant, Fortune and others).
In seeking out the Secret Societies (not so secret anymore) the Seeker after Truth expects to find a ready made programme guaranteed to lead him to the Path of Enlightenment. The Theosophical Society…the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn…the O.T.O. (and many more) – all appear to offer the possibility of total Initiation to the aspiring neophyte.
In my personal experience, this is not so.
All groups may enjoy the benefit of symbolic systems which do, in part, speak of the Truth. But none have the whole Truth and there is always dross amidst the gold (much dross).
By and large, the greatest Truth is that contained in societies which emphasise the Hermetic Philosophy will all its attendant symbology. We are speaking of some of the symbols mentioned by myself in the earlier part of this conclusion. The Alchemists and authentic Rosenkreuzers have provided the bulk of these symbols in their teachings.
As I have stated earlier, there must be no reductionism in relation to these symbols a la Jung. Jung was indeed a great collector, purveyor and explainer of these symbols but missed out by not regarding them as essential pointers to Transcendent Spirituality (the symbols themselves are not Spirit as such but come from Spirit, although certainly not in the Spiritualists’ sense). This lack of emphasis on Spirit was commented on by both Steiner and Guenon (who nevertheless both adhered to other world views/personal interpretations with which this author cannot agree).
Hermetic-Alchemical-Rosicrucian symbology is certainly supra-individual and provides a timeless intimation of immortality – eternal life (no less)!
It is as if certain qualities of the human soul were perfectly rewarded, acknowledged and encouraged by specific symbols. Ethical virtues, achieved by self-sacrifice, for example, are a case in point. The prizes are not won easily. Sacrifice is suffering. The rewards – bestowed in dream and vision – provide spiritual certainty for the Hermeticist, knowledge not faith (which is, after all, intellectual sacrifice).
The initial eruption of the Transcendent Event is seemingly irrational but it is left to rationality to decipher the Hermetic Code (with the aid of those who went before) and thereby enable full understanding of the ‘gift’.
In many ways, Freemasonry has become a sort of custodian of some of these symbols. This is particularly the case in the example of the ‘Perfect Ashlar’ which is a form of the Alchemist’s ‘Lapis’ or ‘Philosopher’s Stone’, the key Hermetic symbol and the end result of all esoteric endeavour. This has nothing to do with the debased and vulgarised interpretation of the Stone and its symbols given by the degenerate O.T.O. The Stone is a spiritual acquisition and requires self-sacrifice of the highest ilk. This is amplified by the Masonic depiction of the transformation from ‘Rough Ashlar’ to its perfect successor.
The Philosopher’s Stone is certainly the ‘summum bonnum’ of the Hermetic (inward) Quest – bestowed as a result of high ethical action taken in the external world, and truncated into the form of a ‘cube’ in Masonic ritual.
Since the Stone is the result of any particular personal ‘crucifixion’, the outcome is undoubtedly a ‘Christing’ of the individual concerned. Of course, he or she may – and no doubt being human will – slip in future life but the achievement eternally remains, indelibly printed, as it were, on their soul, recognition from and guarantee of the world of Spirit (which is not the supposed “world” of the Spiritualists who, telepathically reading minds and adding fact to primitive imagination and fancy, as well as the myths of their own traditions, fail to understand Hermeticism).
So, dear patient reader, this book certainly now wishes to pay homage to Paracelsus, Basil Valentine, Henricus Madathnus Theosophus, the authors of the Hermetic Museum and all other Hermetic Adepts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in particular. They are still not to be swallowed whole, of course. Far from it. But the true symbols are embedded within their texts and have continued to be carried in Masonic and occult systems ever since the Middle Ages.
Hopefully, also, this work will have given the true story of contemporary occult movements, thereby allowing the discerning enquirer after Wisdom to further sort out the wheat from the chaff, for much chaff there is!