Mark Booth: The Secret History of the World

National Gallery, London Page 212

Corbis/Philadelphia Museum of Art © Succession Marcel

Duchamp/ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2007 Page 230

Corbis/Alinari Archives Page 401

Martin J Powell © Martin J Powell, Page 131

Plate 1: Top: The Kobal Collection/Warner Bros, Left: Bridgeman Art Library/Washington University, St. Louis, USA/Lauros/Giraudon © ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London, Right: Bridgeman Art Library / Prado, Madrid, Spain.

Plate 2: Top: AKG Images, Bottom: Corbis/ Sygma.

Plate 3: Top: Bridgeman Art Library/Peter Willi/Goethe Museum, Frankfurt, Bottom: AKG Images.

Plate 4: Top: The National Gallery of Ireland, Bottom: Corbis/Philadelphia Museum of Art © Succession Marcel Duchamp/ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2007. Plate 5: Private Collection. Plate 6: Top: Art Archive/Musée du Louvre Paris/Gianni Dagli Orti, Left: Bridgeman Art Library/Musee d’Unterlinden, Colmar, France/Giraudon, Right: Bridgeman Art Library/Prado, Madrid, Spain. Plate 7: Private Collection. Plate 8: Private Collection. Plate 9: Top Left: The British Museum, London, Top Right: Private Collection, Bottom: The Kobal Collection/NERO. Plate 10: Top: Bridgeman Art Library/Musee d’Unterlinden, Colmar, France/Giraudon, Bottom: Private Collection. Plate 11: Top: Bridgeman Art Library/Giraudon/Lauros/Ste. Marie Madeleine, Aix-en-Provence, France, Bottom: Private Collection. Plate 12: Top: Bridgeman Art Library/Giraudon/Louvre, Paris, France, Bottom: Bridgeman Art Library/Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna, Austria. Plate 13: Top: Bridgeman Art Library/Giraudon/Prado, Madrid, Spain. Bottom: Bridgeman Art Library/Alinari/Santa Maria della Vittoria, Rome, Italy. Plate 14: Top: Art Archive/Museum der Stadt Wien/Alfredo Dagli Orti, Bottom: Private Collection. Plate 15: Top: Bridgeman Art Library/ Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, USA, Bottom: Bridgeman Art Library/Duomo, Orvieto, Umbria, Italy. Plate 16: Top: Corbis/Christine Kolisch, Bottom: Corbis/Francis G.Mayer

Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders. However, the publishers will be glad to rectify in future editions any inadvertent omissions brought to their attention.

The moment it all came together was when in Hall’s second hand bookshop in Tunbridge Wells, I found a copy of Jacob Boehme’s Mysterium Magnum translated in two volumes by John Sparrow. Written in 1623, before the great influx of esoterica from the East that would result from European empire-building, this book showed me was that there really was a genuine Western esoteric tradition connecting the Mystery schools of Egypt, Greece and Rome with the assertions of modern visionaries like Rudolf Steiner.

Around the same time I also chanced upon Boehme’s The Signature of All Things , Paracelsus’s The Archidoxes of Magic , and Paracelsus: Life and Prophecies , a collection of his writings edited and with a short biography by Franz Hartmann, and The Works of Thomas Vaughan , the English Rosicrucian, edited by A.E. Waite — in a beautiful glowing gold cover. Rich pickings indeed, these books provided further confirmation of this tradition. A modern book, Joscelyn Godwin’s Robert Fludd: Hermetic philosopher and surveyor of two worlds actually contained a picture of the earth separating from the Sun. I knew there was an esoteric tradition of this as a historical event, but previously I had only read about in Steiner.

Some writers, including Valentine Tomberg and Max Heindel, have been accused of not sufficiently declaring their debt to Steiner. Let me do so now. Steiner is a colossal figure in arcane circles, bestriding the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, much as Swedenborg bestrode the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. He has done more than any other teacher to illumine the difficult and paradoxical world of esoteric philosophy. There are apparently some six hundred volumes of Steiner’s work, mostly collections of lectures. I must have read thirty of these, at the very least.

Although he has done so much to illumine, his books are by no means an easy read. Steiner’s aim is not to be as clear as possible in the way of Anglo-American academia. His aim is to work on his listeners by a sort of weaving together of themes — the historical with the metaphysical with the moral with the philosophical. There is no structure in the conventional way, and no narrative. Things come round and round again rhythmically, some in larger cycles, some in smaller ones. Many readers will quickly lose patience, but if you persist there are always fascinating nuggets of information — and my own book is as full of these Steinerian nuggets as a plumb pudding.

All idealistic philosophy, (which is to say philosophy that proposes mind came before matter and that matter was precipitated out of a cosmic mind in some way), accounts for this precipitation in terms of a series of emanations from the cosmic mind. The higher science of idealism always — esoteric philosophy in all traditions — relates these emanations to the heavenly bodies in a quite systematic way. The different traditions show some variations, and where they do I have not only simplified for the sake of clarity, I have taken Steiner as my guide. The key texts here are: Theosophy , Occult Science , The Evolution of the World and Humanity and Universe, Earth and Man.

(I have stayed away from disputes between different schools of thought, such as the anthroposophists, the theosophists and the followers of Keyserling — about the chronology of these events — because they are abstruse and on the grounds that, as I argue in my text, time as we understand it today did not exist then. I think such discussions sometimes veer dangerously towards the meaningless, but for an intelligent discussion of these issues I recommend the Vermont Sophia web page and the Sophia Foundation website of Robert Powell. Many works by Keyserling are also available online. Incidentally, I have in one instance — on the question of whether or not stories of two Krishnas should be disentangled, preferred Keyserling to Steiner.)

Steiner is a visionary, and rarely sources his teachings. Much of what he says is in principle unverifiable in any academic or scientific sense, but a lot is verifiable and that has almost always checked out. There are only a handful of exceptions, I believe.

I think a problem with Steiner is that he is such a great figure that people who follow in his footsteps find it hard to think freely and independently. Steiner’s shadow can inhibit originality. Partly because I have worked for so long in publishing, where a pig-headed certainty that you are right is indispensable if you are to enjoy any success, and partly because my research has ranged so widely that I have been able, to some degree at least, to see Steiner in context, I have not felt him in any way a burden — rather as an inspiration.

Among other modern teachers G.I. Gurdjieff means to tease and bemuse in his writings, but his gigantic, ten volumes All And Everything also contain astonishing nuggets that confirm ancient, esoteric teaching. His protégée, Ouspensky, had a gift for reframing ancient wisdom in what we might without being too cute call a modernist idiom in In Search of the Miraculous and Tertium Organon . Likewise immersed in the Sufi tradition René Guénon is the image of Gallic intellectual rigour, and I have used his Man and his Becoming , and The Lord of the World , and Introduction to the Study of Hindu Doctrine, not only as sources of information but as models of good discipline.

The Secret Wisdom of Qabalah is a wonderfully concise yet illuminating guide. In terms of a specifically Christian esoteric tradition, The Perfect Way by Anna Bonus Kingsford and Edward Maitland, written in 1881, is difficult to find, but I chanced upon a ring-bound photocopy. Written by a High Church Anglican, C.G. Harrison, The Transcendental Universe was published in 1893, causing a furor in esoteric circles both inside and outside the Church, because it revealed things the secret societies thought better kept secret. From the Orthodox Perspective, the small library of books by Omraam Mikhal Aïvanhov represent a tradition of nurturing the ancient Sun mysteries and Christian esoteric teachings on love and sexuality. Mentioned in the text, Meditations on the Tarot was published anonymously in Paris in 1980, it was written by a former disciple of Steiner’s, Valentin Tomberg, who later became a Roman Catholic. (For a fascinating account of the fallout, I recommend The Case of Valentin Tomberg by Sergei O. Prokofieff.) Meditations on the Tarot is a treasure trove of Christian esoteric lore. The Zelator by David Ovason is a neglected classic of modern esoteric writing. It draws on the wisdom of several schools but has a Christian message at its heart. Rudolf Steiner’s books on Jesus Christ have been invaluable, especially on the Sun-Mystery central to esoteric Christianity: Christianity as a Mystical Fact and the Mysteries of Antiquity, The Spiritual Beings in the Heavenly Bodies and in the Kingdoms of Nature, Building Stones for an understanding of the Mystery of the Golgotha, the Influences of Lucifer and Ahriman, From Buddha to Christ , his various commentaries on the gospels, including the so-called fifth gospel and The Redemption of Thinking (on Thomas Aquinas). I have also tracked down some works excluded from the various extensive Steiner publishing programmes, including his early, theosophical work on Atlantis and Lemuria , and more importantly for my text, Inner Impulses of Evolution: The Mexican Mysteries and the Knights Templar . I have made much use of the biblical commentaries of Steiner’s friend Emil Bock from Genesis to The Three Years and Saint Paul. I have also used Lore and Legend of the English Church by G.S. Tyack, and Good and Evil Spirits by Edward Langton.