Por: Angel Ontiveros C.
AD FONTES
The universe or the world, as a result of the masturbation of the Gods
Man is an animal locked up outside his cage Paul Valéry[1]
There are places on this old planet where time does not behave like clockwork, but like an eyelid that closes and opens over other centuries. Those who have been on the Guise plateau, just outside Cairo when the moon anoints the stones with ancient silver, who have climbed Machu Picchu and seen how the mist envelops the mountains like a gift they never asked for, who have learned their foreheads on the Mayan or Aztec pyramids and have felt under their palm a heartbeat that is not of blood but of lime and mystery: They know that what they have experienced does not fit into ordinary words. They have brushed an undercurrent that does not appear on the maps of official history. That band of ideas that did not begin in Greece or Rome, but springs from deeper springs: Egypt, China, India, and also from those Amerindian civilizations whose thought comes to us like an echo without writing, waiting for its turn in the great book of memory. (This is what I call in The Story in the Mirror[2], the possibility that there is an underground band of ideas).
Ancient Egypt with its pyramids, the Incas with Machu Picchu, the Mayan and Aztec pyramids – no one really knows how they were built. Not with what tools, nor with what cursed or blessed technology. In this way, those ruins are themselves part of the greatest riddles in the world[3]. And in the mythology of this ancient world, in its temples, in its rituals, in its vision of man, the enigma thickens until it becomes almost sacred. The knowledge of that ancient world is the red thread that I follow like a pilgrim looking for a forgotten door. I suspect that the secret is rooted in an all-pervasive worldview: the sky was a living body, the earth an altar, and each star a name pronounced by a god.
We are often told that the evolution of our time with its technological vertigo, its mild wars, its connected loneliness cannot be overlooked or even understood. But all that is appearance, the shell of the world. Here I try to present a new story about our present and future. Perhaps then, if you listen to it with the ear of the heart, you will begin to see the world in a whole new way. Like someone who looks at a stained-glass window for the first time at dawn.
Even now I move at the crossroads where religion and science embrace and wound each other. Between the familiar and the unknown, between established cultural history and those esoteric currents that academia usually silences as if they were family secrets. This time I take off for Italy. In Rome he was confused. The churches are wonderful, yes, with a magical glow that makes them float above the ground like ships that have forgotten the sea. But at the same time, you find baroque gold and splendour in excess: so much ostentation that it was initially difficult for me to accept. It looked like a smokescreen to hide something. Even more confusing I left the Galleria Borghese, a museum that was the private villa of Cardinal Scipione Borghese, so close to Pope Paul V. There are the most beautiful statues I have ever seen in my life. In the large hall you can find, for example, Pluto and Proserpina, the great masterpiece of the sculptor Bernini. I was surprised that there was so much that I couldn’t match: this statue was commissioned by a cardinal, but the motif was pagan, from the world of the gods of antiquity. And the statue breathed corporality, the erotic of the god who steals the goddess into the realm of death, with his hands on her bare thighs. You can see how the fingers of the god of death penetrate the marble flesh. The stone becomes flesh. The raptor and the abducted woman are made of marble, but the hands sink, the thighs give way. What kind of faith was that, which commissioned such a scandal for a cardinal’s villa?
Here a question arises within me, sharp as a thorn: what actually happened in Rome during the period between 1400 and early 1600? Obviously, the Catholic Church found something strange. Suddenly, the Catholic Church was no longer omnipotent. New and different thoughts had begun to blossom. They came from an unexpected direction. They came from times past, from a period in history that should have been forgotten (and perhaps for that very reason was more dangerous). And at the centre of these thoughts was something new and different, something from ancient times that carried a great mystery inside, like a snake’s egg.
There’s a very conventional linear view of the story behind this. As if time were an arrow that cannot be deflected. And this is exactly where I want to start: with a more critical, more twisted, more honest vision. Because the Renaissance is contrasted with the so-called medieval period, and the Middle Ages is in itself the invention of the Renaissance as a concept[4]. A shadow that the Renaissance needed to shine. And what really distinguishes the Renaissance? There are many different things, but one of the most important is the motto of that time that in Latin was called Ad Fontes[5], which can be translated as «return to the original sources». They generally meant the ancient scriptures, as one of the most important impulses of the Renaissance was the new translations of Plato’s writings. Most of Plato’s writings were unknown in Western Europe during the Middle Ages, but at the beginning of the Renaissance most of them were accessed in the Eastern Church, the Orthodox Church in Constantinople. So, paradoxically, the way forward was to look back. Something like dolphins that were land mammals and returned to the sea.
In History in the Looking Glass, we wrote that Descartes’ dualism was considered in his time as an anti-esoteric, anti-hermetic or anti-occult philosophy. A kind of vaccine against the mysterious. But what was that hermetic flow of esoteric ideas, what the Catholic Church would judge as «hidden» (with capital letters or with lower case, it doesn’t matter, because what matters is fear)? It is an ancient doctrine of what the world is. A doctrine that was rediscovered during the Renaissance, and that runs alongside other ancient ideas about art, architecture, literature and philosophy. But precisely in the Hermetic doctrine there was something that seriously threatened the social system prevailing at the end of the sixteenth century, and those who advocated these ideas risked even losing their lives. It wasn’t a parlour game. This reminds me of a documentary I saw with the somewhat sensationalist title of Hidden Secrets of the Vatican[6]. It was the first time the Vatican had shown some of its unknown treasures to a wider audience. Delighted, I looked at the warm corridors. In one place you could see a letter from Voltaire praising the then Pope for his good knowledge of Latin (Voltaire praising a Pope! The world is full of ironies). In another display case you could see the abdication letter with dozens of stamps that Queen Christina of Sweden had with her when she arrived in Rome in 1655, after leaving the throne to convert to Catholicism. But in the best place in the whole exhibition like a chalice, like an altar there was a simple letter. The letter contained only a few lines. I still remember today how amazed I felt: it took me to the depths of the history of ideas, because the simple letter written by none other than Galileo Galilei, the great scientist who ended up before the Inquisition, was a document of the trial against him. On the parchment, in Galileo’s own handwriting and signature, read: «I hereby withdraw my teachings.»[7] The man who had looked at Jupiter’s moons through a tube, kneeling, recanting. Why? Why were Galileo’s thoughts that the earth revolved around the sun so provocative? Was the sun offended? No. What was offended was power.
In attempting to answer this, we should first go back a little in time, to the beginning of the Renaissance, when some strange writings were rediscovered that were said to have come from Egypt. The Renaissance itself was founded on a rediscovery of the Hermetic tradition, which began in Florence when the Medici commissioned a learned man named Marsilio Ficino to translate for the first time the Platonic writings that had come from Constantinople. But among the ancient writings were some thinner, more vibrant writings, which bore the name of the Corpus Hermeticum[8], which was written at the beginning of our era back in 200 B.C., although its content is based on considerably older traditions. And today it is known with great certainty that much of ancient Egyptian thought is included in this Corpus Hermeticum. Therefore, it is also ancient Egyptian philosophy that really permeates everything in the Corpus Hermeticum. The first thing they thought about in the Renaissance was that they had suddenly discovered the origin of religion. The Medici were so interested in the writings that they told Ficino: first translate those, which Plato will wait[9]. The essence of the old Hermetic knowledge was that, according to the Corpus Hermeticum, man can attain divine equality by his own power[10]. No steps. No intermediaries. No ecclesiastical bench.
Another renowned hermetic of the Renaissance who took this seriously was Pico della Mirandola, who published a paper on human dignity, which is always cited when talking about the intellectual influence of the Renaissance[11]. You could say it’s the beginning of modern human vision. But a modernity not yet mutilated, not yet amputated. It is a doctrine centred on the freedom of the individual not in today’s consumerist sense, but in the sense that the individual has the potential to attain the divine without the church. The Hermetic writings encourage, impel man to use and develop fully all his inherent powers, to know himself and to acquire knowledge of the world; so, knowing one self and knowing the world are two inseparable sides of the same effort of knowledge. Like the two sides of a coin that has not yet been minted. So, if there is an idea of salvation in Hermeticism, it is that the saviour is knowledge: a combination of inner and outer knowledge. A gnosis, if you will, but without the sometimes-silly secrets.
According to Hermeticism, the sun is the centre of the universe. And this was different from the doctrine of salvation preached by the Church at that time. The church had the function of being a mediator between God and the human being; Outside the Catholic Church there is no salvation[12] (this is still Catholic dogma, so to speak). That one could be saved, that is, equal to God without the church… we can already guess what the potential of that thought was. A metaphysical time bomb. Here too we have a seed for Luther’s Protestantism, and for what was called Renaissance humanism, and all this inspired by the mysterious scripture that has its roots in Egypt, the essence of what was once the philosophical core of Egypt: the magic of the Corpus Hermeticum. Not trick magic, but correspondence magic.
If we stick to the scientific side of this apostle in what I wrote about Descartes in History in the Looking Glass, and follow that line, an incredibly interesting story is revealed, where much fits into the place that has seemed enigmatic to many in the history of the sixteenth century. If we return to this: according to Hermeticism, the sun is the center of the physical universe and also the symbol of human life. That this did not become so controversial from a theological point of view was because it was interpreted by the so-called Christian Hermeticism in Christian terms: where, of course, Jesus was the sun (floors with sculptures and everything possible according to Hermetic principles). So, at first this was not threatening. But then things began to change, as the tide changes when the moon pulls on it.
One of the first consequences in science was that a Polish monk named Copernicus was inspired by the Hermetic doctrine. In the Corpus Hermeticum he had found statements that the earth moves, that the earth rotates around its axis, that the planets orbit the sun. Copernicus mentions it at the beginning of his book on the orbits of the celestial spheres[13]. Therefore, he was inspired by the Hermetic teachings, mixed them with modern teachings and began to describe the heliocentric system. A monk, too. The irony: a churchman moving the earth.
The other scientific example was Johannes Kepler, who discovered that the orbits of the planets are elliptical, which was one of the foundations of Newton’s theory of gravity. According to Kepler, who was also a hermetic, he had studied the Hermetic writings and from there had assumed that the planets, including the earth, were living beings that were governed by the soul of the world, which had its center in the sun[14]. So, the earth was not a dead rock, but a creature. A cosmic whale.
Another of this era who took hermeticism more seriously than anyone else and saw himself as the messiah of that tradition was Giordano Bruno. Hermeticism would save the world, he claimed, and he had no interest in the salvation of Catholic dogma and, above all, of the church, or politics. Giordano Bruno, who was a monk or another monk, do you notice the pattern? He also expressed in all seriousness that all men and all women (unusual language at the time, almost revolutionary) had exactly the same potential to be brilliant as he was. He attacked all who held back people’s ability, was totally against the teachings of sin, and believed that this magical Egyptian religion found in the Hermetic scriptures was the oldest and truest religion that had ever been corrupted by Christianity and Judaism. Giordano Bruno believed that Jesus had tried to restore the Jewish religion to its Egyptian roots[15]; that is what Jesus wanted to accomplish for himself. Bruno considered the universe infinite, that there were many suns with many planets, and that he too had taken this knowledge from the Hermetic Scriptures. He seems to have been a freek[16] in his time, a weirdo, an eccentric who very early in his life adopted an incredibly independent attitude, unlike Newton, who hid his hermetic beliefs like a teenager from his magazines. Bruno was open to being hermetic, while Newton kept it secret; only after his death did it become known that Newton was a hermetic, an alchemist, etc. The fear of the stake makes one learn to be silent.
Giordano Bruno was not only an ideologue or philosopher, but he also had great political ambitions, and aspired to realize the hermetic vision of politics. The beginning of this new hermetic world was seen by him in the work of Copernicus, and he was a strong defender of Copernicus. He looked for which political leaders could trust to support this new hermetic transformation of European societies. He found a sympathizer in the French king Henry III, who was a friend of occult philosophy (also called Hermetic philosophy), cited by a renowned Renaissance Hermetic magician named Cornelius Agrippa in his work called Occult Philosophy. Bruno saw in Henry III a hope for a new European renaissance, with peace and tolerance, free from ecclesiastical power, and based on Hermetic philosophy. He traveled to France and from there was sent by Henry III to England, where he wrote several of his well-known works, and there he influenced one of the first natural philosophers, William Gilbert, who created something that was basically the same method that Descartes would later write. That is why it is somewhat arbitrary to say that it was Descartes or Gilbert who was the father of the scientific method: it is about tests and hypotheses through empirical observations, which was also a hermetic idea, that according to Hermeticism the maxim was «understand the world, follow nature», that is, do not read old books, look around you in nature. So that’s a lot of what we associate as very central things in the scientific revolution, which is clearly seen in the Hermetic tradition. This began to be discovered seriously in the investigation of historical ideas only from the 1950s onwards thanks to the great Frances Yates, and it has not really spread in the public consciousness how central Hermeticism was in the scientific revolution[17]. People still think that science was born in Greece, grew up in the Renaissance, and came of age with Newton. But they forget about the Egyptian womb.
Back to Bruno: he went to Germany, to Bohemia, the current Czech Republic. Henry III’s hope was dashed when he was assassinated in France, and conservative forces seized power. Then things began to heat up. Bruno publicly condemned the Pope and the Church for being tyrannical and violent. In Venice there was also a political opposition to the Pope inspired by Bruno, and all the people of the Venetian opposition allied themselves with Bruno in one way or another. Bruno was lured to Venice, and in 1592 he was arrested by the Inquisition and taken to Rome. The head of the Inquisition in Bruno’s trial, which lasted several years, sentenced him in 1600 to the stake[18]. The prosecutor who convicted him was named Roberto Bellarmine, and it was Bellarmine himself who would later sentence Galileo to house arrest. So, the hand was the same, it only changed the name of the victim. After Bruno’s death, another Italian, Tommaso Campanella (also from Naples), took Bruno’s place. He inspired a fierce revolt against the papacy in Calabria, politically and philosophically inspired by Hermeticism. Campanella wrote a utopian writing called The City of the Sun, where he called the ideal hermetic society (again the sun in the center), like Bruno[19]. Because of these personal consequences, he was arrested by the Inquisition, but escaped execution by posing as a madman (a classic) and was imprisoned for 20 years. However, once released, he resumed his activities. The flame would not go out.
Hermeticism was not a religion in the ordinary sense, but it was a religion of knowledge, as opposed to a religion of direct mystical salvation that the church advocated at the time. We could say that during the Renaissance an «apparently» new thought had arrived in Europe, when in fact it was old things that had already flourished in Egypt many years ago, since it is well known that the Renaissance was a rebirth of antiquity. But most people think it’s about building art, sculptures, painting, mythology, but it’s not about this piece of the puzzle, it’s about what we call science today, cosmology, and stuff. Symbolically, the heliocentric theory (the sun in the center) was associated with the Hermetic political upheaval: the sun in the center was the symbol of the Hermetic political upheaval. A round and burning flag. So how did the pope and Catholic authorities react when Galileo defended the heliocentric worldview? They interpreted that he was waging some kind of political struggle, which explains a lot of what’s a little odd about all the proceedings around Galileo[20]. It wasn’t just astronomy: it was insurrection.
What was the result in the seventeenth century? Did science come to embody a new hermetic world, and why not? One might wonder… only because Descartes was also under the influence of the general Hermetic thought of the Renaissance as it was the basis of his independent thought, and his belief in man’s ability to develop himself, but Descartes was a Catholic and he knew very well what had happened to Bruno and Galileo. He didn’t want to support church power, but he wanted to develop a philosophy that would be free from all those complications and remain faithful to the church. The background of dualism that I mentioned in History in the Mirror, Cartesian dualism, saves the scientific part of Hermeticism, saves the potential idea of natural philosophy from occult influences that were politically risky. So, Descartes’ dualism became the cure for this given situation. Esoteric Hermeticism, the anti-esoteric philosophy of nature, was perceived and used in this way. Several of Descartes’ strong defenders, such as the Catholic philosopher and mathematician Mersenne, realized this very quickly and used dualism to argue against the Hermeticists[21]. Dualism came to be an effective intellectual counterfeit of Hermeticism, which somehow saved Descartes and made it, despite all the controversies associated with it, quite acceptable in Catholic circles. But what was the thought in the secrecy that was cut? Well, that was the correspondence between the internal and the external. Descartes established an insurmountable limit: there is no correspondence between the macrocosm and the microcosm, everything that was hidden. And he cut it with a clean slash, like a surgeon who amputates a healthy leg to save the patient from an imaginary infection. And what does this mean for us today? It means a lot of things, depending on what we’re interested in and what we want to emphasize, but most importantly, because we concentrate on writing the story itself, what happened historically, and what influenced what seemed to be the struggle of ideas. But above all because it was a game of political power that decided which ideas could be disseminated and which have consequences that continue to this day. If the game of political power had been different in the seventeenth century, then we might be living in a completely hermetic and modern world today, without the dualism that caused so much stupidity. And what are the stupidities that dualism has caused? Now let’s get to it.
By making such a strong distinction between the internal and the external, we on the one hand have an incredibly strong science based on the notion of the external world and its material basis, and we see that way of observing ourselves as part of the external world. That is, it means a kind of objectification of ourselves that sooner or later becomes a kind of barrier to a different understanding of oneself. Resorting to this distinction makes our ability to see the outside world as a relevant part of oneself impossible. Engagement with living nature, empathy with living nature, seeing oneself as a literal part of nature, is also impossible to maintain in the image of the Cartesian world. A radical question of interpretation of this becomes: is the Cartesian duality related to the current environmental degradation and predatory operation of the world? My answer is a definite yes, and there is a lot of research even philosophizing about what that means in that sense[22]. Because if you talk about the exploitation of the land, naturally you don’t have to be so philosophically gifted to ask the question: if there is some kind of basis of thought that leads us to behave in such a radical way for so long, it must be because we do not see the forests that we cut down, we do not see the rivers that we pollute as something that has to do with ourselves; then we would not have done it. This is not to say that non-Cartesian cultures are necessarily more environmentally friendly at all times; Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. But the specifically modern type of exploitation and all the ideology, theory, and science associated with it can easily be traced back to this radical dualism. We are schizophrenics who have forgotten that the world is our own flesh.
In Hermeticism there was a potential based on hermetic ideas, or as Bruno would say, a more humane and nature-friendly science. We could have had a different world if this political power struggle in the seventeenth century hadn’t worked out the way it did. It is therefore one of the historical events that ultimately determined how that whole vision turned out to be real. What would that other world look like? It is not speculation. On the contrary, you can see a lot of more radical cosmological thinking today, which is incredibly compatible with the Hermetic tradition. There are scientists who also know this today. They don’t talk about it much, but sometimes they write about it in some popular scientific journal, though not in such radical terms. But for those who have eyes to see, there are very strong tendencies toward the Hermetic tradition[23]. It is not that the secrecy has disappeared because it was called hidden, and that it did not give any results. That also happened, but it was a consequence of Catholic propaganda, which classified the esoteric side of Hermeticism as hidden and unacceptable by reason. This also applied in science: when Newton proposed his theory of gravity (gravity was an invisible force, i.e., literally an occult force), French scientists and philosophers after the succession immediately branded Newton’s physics as occult, therefore illegally hermetic. And Newton was a hermetic. Then, when all this was classified as non-cultural, non-scientific, irrational, etc., Hermeticism went underground, and in clandestinity it could not follow any rational premise of conventionality. In other words, Hermeticism was irrationalized, and even today there are many people indoctrinated in this who still think like the Catholics of the seventeenth century. These people believe that what cannot be measured does not exist, and that the soul is an empty word.
Newton was looking for something. He saw himself and his works, especially Principia, as means or steps on the way to a rediscovery, a rebirth of something called during the Renaissance Prisca Sapientia, also called eternal wisdom, or the lost memory of humanity[24]. It was a notion that long ago man actually understood many things, and because of this knowledge he accumulated intellectual, practical, and technical skills and systems that expressed this understanding. Newton looked everywhere for traces of this timeless wisdom. Another of his contemporaries, who also believed in eternal wisdom, was Wilhelm von Leibniz. Two giants who looked back to jump forward.
Now, the important thing when talking about ancient Egypt, or any other ancient culture, is that we must assume that we are totally indoctrinated in a way of looking at the world and ourselves, which means that we make a strict distinction between the inner world and the outer world. The external world is solid, it can be said, it is as it is; The external world has no internal life in itself, there is no «interiority» of the external world, and we see ourselves as part of the external world. Our subjective self-image, our own experience, our experience of being who we are, we call subjective. We have no official idea that there is an equivalent in the external world. The external world is opaque, it is like a surface, and that is why we say that it is objective, that it exists independently of us. So, we create scientific methods that make us see the outside world as an object, and so we try to understand the opaque surface through this rational way with science and penetrate beneath it, but still on an abstract and traditional plane. There is no subjective experience in a theory or a scientific explanation of reality; If there is, it becomes some kind of poetry or metaphor that most popular science writers are good at, but it is still an indirect subjectivation of something that from a scientific point of view in itself is only a rational objectification of something that exists independently of us. The difference in ancient Egypt’s view of the external world is extremely sophisticated and elaborate, but the basic principle is the same. What we’re dealing with here is the original human approach to existence that Egypt and some other ancient civilizations have somehow systematized, without abandoning the basic view, which is a kind of common basic view of existence. In fact, all indigenous peoples who do not have the dualistic division of things achieved an enormous, elaborate, and institutionalized systematization of that approach. Hence, it could be said that ancient Egypt made science out of this way of seeing things, but it is a science that in essence means a direct contact between man and the environment, since there is no direct difference between the subject and the object as we see it. Rather, all objects symbolize subjects; That is, when you see things in the outer world or other natural phenomena in the outer world whatever they are: rivers, lakes, storms, etc., what you see is the external expression of the gods. But not gods in our modern sense (not bearded on thrones), but what the ancient Egyptians called Neteru[25] and a correct translation is «beginning.» That is, a Neteru in ancient Egypt is itself a living entity, so a thunderous storm is visibly perceptible, it is the external expression of an entity or spirit of the storm. All natural phenomena, all living beings, and all human beings are external expressions of an inner spirit. But that does not mean that this external expression is a radiance, but a direct consequence. For example, if we sunbathe: Ra[26] is the god behind the sun. Ra is what really exists; when Ra exists as a verb, it is expressed in the sun. Just as when I write now, my thought is expressed on paper: there is no difference between my thought and the paper at this moment as I write. In the same way, there is no difference between Ra and the sun. But just as the paper and letters that come to your eyes now express and have a direct direction, there is no distance between the physical expression and my thought as you read it. The same is true of sunlight. There is no boundary between Ra and the sun; it’s not that Ra is more real than the sun, they’re just as real. We see Ra by seeing the sun, we experience Ra by experiencing the sun, everything we can associate with the sun, no matter how symbolic or concrete, is an expression of Ra. So, when you sunbathe on the beach, you’re sunbathing like a god. It is not a metaphor. It’s a direct experience, if you know how to see.
And who are we humans illuminated by the rays or brightness of the sun according to the ancient Egyptians? The human being is a living being among other living beings that apparently has a special ability to develop a kind of intentional contact with what is hidden behind what appears to be. Remember now that what appears to be is what is seen, but expresses what is behind. We must not forget to establish this limit between visible expression and what is expressed through it (although in Egypt that limit was more like a permeable membrane). We can try to approach it from a different angle, about time. We think of time as a chronological sequence: first comes a year, then another year, and so on. In this way we have our chronology by putting a number one, two and three, etc. Then we have the notion that time is linear and that what has happened in time has disappeared. But the ancient Egyptians didn’t think so. For them there were two types of time: a cyclical time that was expressed in various ways. It could be perceived by the rising and setting of the sun, it was perceived by the months, it was perceived by the slow movements of the stars, and by the cyclicality of the Nile and its periodic floods. Therefore, there was no linear time for them as we imagined it. There was also another time called Resertepy (the initial time), which was the time, the moment in which everything arose. That time was in ancient times, but it did not end in ancient times; it was not that first there was Resertepy and then came the rest of time, but that Resertepy lies beneath all time, is constantly present. And it is from Resertepy, from the initial time, from that moment from which everything is born all the time, continuously, and that is where the gods live, and they create the world, and they will do so expressed in various ways, either as Ra, or as Thoth. For many it is obvious that the world of Plato’s ideas comes from these sources[27]. Plato, at heart, was an Egyptian who spoke Greek.
Everything I have written so far can be conceived as a construction of thought or mythology. The risk is that one behaves as if it were a book or any construction of thought. We are used to treating things as constructs of thought. But when the ancient Egyptian claims that the sun is the actual literal expression of Ra, then it is not a construct but a direct experience. When someone sees and hears through a baboon (and the Egyptians said that baboons greeted the sun at dawn because they saw Ra), it’s not as if they just pretend to be in a trance and talk to it, but they actually do. And that’s what’s so hard for us to understand: that’s the step we never take when we think of ancient Egypt and the equivalent of other ancient civilizations. We never take the step of even imagining what they said meant, that they actually did it according to what they were really thinking[28]. Another example: in the ancient temples of Egypt, colossal statues are not mere ornaments. And when they represent Pharaoh, they represent him as a god-pharaoh, not as that concrete man of flesh and blood who sits on the throne. In the vision of ancient Egypt, the relationship between the image and the represented is absolute, not symbolic. It’s not like when we say that the Swedish king symbolizes the unity of the kingdom, but we know that he is just a human being that one can bump into in the street. No, for the Egyptian, the pharaoh is Horus[29] on earth. It does not represent it: it embodies it. The statue is not a reminder of a god; It is God himself, present and active, breathing in the stone.
This is the kind of thinking that we have a hard time accepting, because our modern, Cartesian mind sharply distinguishes between the object and its meaning. They don’t. For them, the meaning is the object, and the object is the meaning.
Alexander the Great conquered a large part of these lands. His empire extended from his native Greece to Egypt and India. After his death it was divided into different parts, Egypt being one of them, called the Ptolemaic dynasty, this period called Hellenistic. The conquests opened up huge currents of ideas that created a great syncretism in the philosophical field, a mixture of different teachings. They also absorbed many things that came from ancient Egypt, and manifested themselves in something called the Corpus Hermeticum, which are a series of texts allegedly written by Hermes Trismegistos. There are several interpretations as to which Hermes had written the Hermetic Body. According to Arabic tradition, the three Hermes are interpreted as three different periods. The first Hermes lived and spread his doctrine, it was he who built the pyramids, it was he who taught the Egyptians everything they know; he is identified with the god Thoth[30]. Then come the incarnations of Hermes (here we already find the idea of the incarnation, long before the Christian idea). So, when Christians spoke of the incarnation of God, there was already a very long tradition of gods becoming men, and men becoming gods.
A part of the scriptures in Corpus Hermeticum is called in Latin Tabula Smaragdina (the Emerald Tablet). As imagined by the German physicist, alchemist and philosopher Heinrich Khunrath in the seventeenth century, the tablet would have been written on a piece of emerald, crystal or green rock and would have come from a document that is not known where it is, with an unknown alphabet but similar to the ancient Phoenician script of about 1,200 or 36,000 years ago.[31] Despite this, the content of the Emerald Tablet was maintained through the passage of time and influenced various aspects of knowledge. It should be noted that the physicist and mathematician Isaac Newton was not only the translator of the Emerald Tablet, but also integrated it into his work[32]. Here I transcribe a part of the translation made by I. Newton, that magician who disguised himself as a scientist:
I- This is the truth, far from any veil of falsehood.
II- What is below is similar to what is above. Through this, the wonders of the One’s work are sought and perfected.
The phrase «as above, so below» is the maximum guide of the followers of Hermeticism and has as its premise that what happens at any level of reality, whether physical, emotional or mental, also happens at the other levels. A principle of universal echo.
«Within each is the other, so that if you understand one, you can come to understand the other»: this is interpreted as the relationship between the macrocosm (the Universe) and the microcosm (the human being). These words capture the essence of alchemy which explains that the sky is a mirror of the Earth and that all things correspond to each other. In addition, alchemy was a doctrine followed by figures such as Robert Boyle, the father of chemistry, Isaac Newton, among others[33].
III. Further, as all things were created by the One, so all things were created in the image of the One.
Like the Abrahamic doctrines (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), it suggests belief in a single god, and those who believe that the Tablet was created before the Old Testament explain that the root of the doctrines of these three religions is in the principles of Hermeticism revealed in the text. On the other hand, some versions argue that the author of the Emerald Tablet was a contemporary of Abraham, and it should be noted that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all share this belief.
IV- His father is the Sun and his mother the Moon. The wind carried him in her belly. Its nurse is the Earth, the mother of all perfection.»
V- He is the father of perfection in the whole world.
VI – Its power is strong if it is transformed into Earth.
VII – Separate the earth from the fire, the subtle from the gross, but be prudent, modest and wise when you do so.
VIII. That rises from Earth to Heaven, and then again descends to Earth and combines the powers of what is above and what is below. Thus, you will gain glory in the whole world, and darkness you will drive away along with all shadows and blindness.
- By his strength he snatches the glory of all other strength and power. Because he is able to penetrate and master everything subtle and everything raw and hard.
X- In this way the world was created.
- This is the origin of its marvellous prodigies and admirable effects.
XII. For this reason I am called Hermes Trismegistus, because I possess the three parts of the wisdom and philosophy of the whole universe.
XIII. What I had to say is over[34].
The authorship of the panel is attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, which is a legendary combination of the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian Djehuty (in ancient Egyptian) or Thoth (in Greek). According to some, Hermes, which means «three times great», would be the author of several Greek alchemical, occult and theological works. The Italian Marsilio Ficino opined that the author of the panel was the best philosopher, the best priest and king. However, he explains that this is because he possesses three parts of wisdom: alchemy, astrology, and theurgy. Apparently, this tablet was written with the intention of clarifying the most hidden mysteries of life and creation; however, it has left equally or more questions to those who investigate and follow this doctrine. Although it is well known, the table was seen by very few. One of his earliest appearances was between 500-799 AD, written in Arabic by Balinas, who explained that he found the tablets in the hands of an old man who was sitting on a golden throne in a vault under a statue of Hermes in Turkey. What Hermes Trismegistos (the divine writer) wants to tell us is that man and nature are interconnected in a very intimate way, and that we are a concrete expression of something that is itself divine. Divine principles exist on different levels; There’s a level of thinking here as well. In this way, from the One, the absolute origin, to the diverse world, it is like condensing into several steps, and it becomes more and more concrete with each step. What happens with this vision, if we simplify a lot, would involve something like entering a portal, and suddenly you find yourself in another world: is that you enter another phase of this manifestation of the world that precedes the realization that we call the ordinary world, more like a dream world, really a very clear dream world in itself, but it is not as solid a subject as it is in the final stage, the real world. So according to the Hermetic approach: the concrete world, fully manifested, is the consummate expression of the One or God if you will. That idea is also found, for example, in the philosopher Leibniz who says that this is the best of all worlds, and this is what he means, because Leibniz was also a hermetic just like Newton. All is One, and One is all, and divine masturbation is the creative act that never ceases.
How did they think about ancient Egypt? How did they look (in our words) at the image of the world and its existence? What did they think they were doing when they did what they did, and tried to accomplish things, how did they think? The study of ancient Egypt does not make these unknowns any less mysterious; It becomes more fascinating because after a while, when you’ve started to understand a little bit of it, you recognize it in a bit of a peculiar way. You recognize many ideas from later times and also from other cultures, such as Chinese, Indian, and Native American cultures, although they are expressed in other words and in a different way, often much more detailed than we are used to. But there are many things that are repeated, and this also arouses some kind of sense of curiosity; You get some kind of excitement that there’s something real here. I would not hesitate to call that knowledge a way of seeing the world, man, that tells us something that has a real depth of understanding. And now, when we talk about the universal image, beliefs, religion, worship, etc. of ancient Egypt, we leave the imaginative; This is something of which there are written sources and a great deal of research, here we no longer move in the darkness of the same mysteries. After Jean-François Champollion (the father of Egyptology) deciphered the hieroglyphics, there was another problem, namely the interpretation of these, because just because you know how to read something doesn’t mean you understand it! And as in all philosophy of religious research, diverse opinions prevail.
I choose the category of empathetic researchers who can somehow revive their objects of study in themselves[35]. Now I invite you to try to incorporate ourselves into the thought of ancient Egypt. At least let’s try, even if it may be a little difficult to understand, perhaps not because the story itself in a literal sense is incomprehensible, but it is logical and clear, it is possible to follow a type of reasoning at that level if you wish. The difficulty is rather than the basic premises of what the world is, what the beginning of the world is, how perception works, how we experience things, what they mean when we see and feel something, all our modern way that we have to interpret today in our modern world. All of this happens on completely different premises here, and it is a fundamental difficulty, which requires quite a bit of time if one wants to shift one’s consciousness in that direction. One of the most general statements that one can make in this regard is that we make a great distinction between the internal and the external, between the subjective and the objective, which also has its history, which goes back above all in its modern form to René Descartes, to his clear distinction between body and soul. to his modern scientific discussion of the study of the external world as an object that can be measured and described and that exists independently of us, independently of our subjects, and our subjective world compared to it is darker, vaguer, and more difficult to access.
There is a strong scientific tendency to study our subjectivity with the same objectifying methods of doing brain research, where the brain is studied, how it looks and functions in different ways. There are different hypotheses about which part of the brain does what, which areas of the brain have mental and psychological functions have been mapped; This is an objective way of intellectually describing and understanding something that each of us subjectively experiences from the inside, so in a way it is an inverse way of understanding ourselves from the outside in. Anyway, if we try to immerse ourselves in the imaginary world of Ancient Egypt, then we must make sure that we abandon those assumptions because they don’t have a jot of anything in that direction, because there they don’t make a clear distinction between the internal and the external. That doesn’t mean that they don’t make a distinction, or that they don’t see it as different, but that their way of describing it is completely different.
Osiris[36] is a very central part of Egypt’s history. Sowing and harvesting were related to this god of fertility: sowing represented something like the burial of Osiris and the harvest as his resurrection. So far, all this is easy to understand as a kind of metaphor, but the perception of the reality behind it is much deeper. What was a god in ancient Egypt? This we have to understand, otherwise all these myths, and the number of gods they had, cannot be properly understood. What did they mean by «god,» what was the relationship between all these gods? It means something very different from what most people associate with that word. Another thing mentioned earlier is that we have to abandon the sharp distinction between subject and object, between the internal and external world, the psychological and the objective, mundane, biological if one will. We also have to abandon our usual concept of linear time with the «nows» being replaced in a kind of chronological continuity; We have to abandon our perception of space as something where things are independent of each other and independent of us. You are where you are, sitting in front of your computers, furniture, and your surroundings, who believe that they have a spatial location independent of you, and it is very difficult for you to think completely spontaneously that it could be otherwise. Maybe you think I’m asking you to do something that’s contrary to everything you’ve learned in your life, right? And it is precisely this that makes it difficult to understand other ways of thinking, not only in ancient Egypt but also in other «non-modern» ways of thinking. For there is always a different conception of subjects and objects, a different conception of time and space (remember the conception of the future in Aymara culture that we raised in History in the Mirror), and there is a different conception of what we call gods today. In ancient Egypt there were different traditions of how the world had been created, and this is where we need to start. How can the world exist, how was the world constituted?
There were different perceptions of this and it was all handled by different centers, in different parts of Egypt. These different cosmogonies (i.e., description or learning about how the world is created), which existed in ancient Egypt, emphasize different things and different aspects, but they do not contradict each other and are different stories. So, speaking of time and space, the creation myths in ancient Egypt describe a process of non-physical spiritual development, and this process occurs in a space before space, a time before time. Therefore, it is a process, but it does not occur in time or space as we understand it today. To understand this a little more clearly, we can take an analogy when we dream of a long chain of events that we can experience as a real world, but this world does not have a spatial extension in the everyday, in the daily space, but we experience it as a world in the world. We can also be part of a wide range of adventures and chains of events that we subjectively experience in sleep, which lasts for weeks, although it may only last five minutes, or even when you fall asleep in the chair for a few minutes, but the dream itself lasted much longer. You can move, train, or fly by plane to different locations. If you say that this indicates that there is an inner time and room, which is a different time and space than outer time and space, then the beginning of the world according to the ancient Egyptians in this inner space, if we think like that, then it becomes a little clearer what the premise is like: that something happens, but not in this world because this world does not yet exist. So, when the ancient Egyptians looked back to the distant past, it was very different from their own present; The further back they went, the more internal the world became, the same time changed the longer they went back. The absolute state of the universe was then completely internal, and it is in this first spaceless time that they called it Zephtepy, the state before the «now» experienced time, the habitation now experienced; in that state the gods lived and live.
It is the inner world, the world of the gods, but not in the subjective psychological sense, but it is an internal state that exists independently of our world, independent of time and space in our common understanding. I’m talking about the creation of the world: the world doesn’t exist yet, but something exists! So, this first time or Zephtepy takes place at or during the usual time, behind or before the usual time, so not only before time and space appear, before the world becomes reality, but after, right now, still that condition remains alive. So, the first half never ends because it’s not a time in common sense. Here one really has to make an effort to understand in part, and in part not to make parables that point in the wrong direction. But the interesting thing is to ask where the difficult thing lies. The difficulty lies in our capacity for imagination; Our fantasy tries to inject things into us, because this way of thinking deviates from our culture of thought. It’s kind of like when someone throws you into the water and you can’t swim: you sink straight in, you have nothing to hold on to. Hopefully, everything will get a little easier as we begin to get closer to the creation of the world, at least symbolically. If we take a step back, we said above that the first time does not disappear, but continues to exist beneath the visible surface even when the world has been created, although at this moment, in our history, the world has not yet arrived. As I said, the gods are in this inner dimension, they are living principles there, but when the world is created, they will take on an external aspect. To make this clear: the god Ra is the sunlight that gives life in its external form; this light that gives life to the crop, that burns it if it becomes too strong, is the external figure of the god Ra. The god Ra himself is the principle that expresses or manifests itself in this way. Another god, Zho, in his outward figure is a radiant light filled with the air in which we travel and move, but Zho himself lives on the inner plane, though Zho’s life is expressed in this way as we also experience it, and so we can continue with one God after another. (Here it is tempting to claim that Plato’s world of ideas is a philosophical variant of this cosmology.)[37]. So that what is visible and can be experienced externally is the expression of something that lives and acts on that inner plane. There are many gods. We might wonder how and where they came from…
Yes, that’s the core of the poodle. The creation of the universe is a process of materialization of pure spirit; The world is a densification and progressive specification of something that is initially not physical or specific, but this non-physical and non-specific is life itself within and behind everything that is done and then exists. All of this is the common basis for the entire imaginative universe in ancient Egypt, no matter what creation myth we are talking about. But if we now take a more specific myth, that of Heliopolis, it begins with something that is not at all: pure spirit, it is called Nuhn. In the beginning, there was only Nuhn, a dark and infinite abyss of water, a total absence of form, impurity that is nothing. It is water since water has no form, but water is also the source of life. And this primordial state is sometimes represented in a kind of viper-like figure called Nehepcau, which is the first hint of something in the nothingness that is Nuhn. Nehepcau means «giver of vital energies,» and in the loops of the viper lives a creative principle that is the spark of life, one that can only unleash the living potential of Nuhn’s chaos. Nuhn is formless water, the chaos of water, nothingness. This is Nehepcau, the serpent who has the spark that makes something happen in the whole, and when the creative principle begins to work, he is called Atun, also a god like Nuhn. Nehepcau are the first gods, they are the prerequisite for everything. There must be nothing before there can be something; nothing is Nuhn; what begins to become something is Nehepcau, and then it is Atun, which means «to be complete.»
Here one can make associations with the Old Testament creation story: «the spirit of God hovers over the water.» Tuna begins the process of potentiality to the present; one could say in modern philosophical terms: from nothing to something, from total interiority to incipient externality, at the beginning of what can become externality, is what Atun undertakes. From the beginning, neither Nuhn, Nehepcau nor Tuna are different from each other, but they begin to differentiate. It can be said that Tuna makes space between the loops of Nehepcau and thus begins to define itself as something that exists in itself. So that’s the first cosmic fact: making a place for Tuna in order to exist. This means that everything that exists, everything that follows, even our world, is not different from Atun, but is manifested Atun. So, Tuna is in everything, and everything is in Atun. Tuna is the creative principle that begins to make its place in nothingness, which, as it leans forward, widens something between the loops of the snake in chaos. The snake is a kind of movement in chaos, a kind of incipient differentiation from chaos that is nothing in itself, and in this incipient and sinuous chaos, Tuna has the opportunity to make room for it. That is, everything that follows our world is in Tuna and it is Tuna that emerges. Just as when Ra manifests himself to become the sun, Ra is not the sun but the sun is Ra; this occurs when the god Ra is realized, manifested, densified in what we call the world, then he is the sun, but Ra is not the sun, but the origin of the sun.
My interpretation of this is that you start with nothing, and for every step that you imagine for that something to become more mundane, more and more concrete, more and more manifested, each of those steps is given a name and becomes a principle in itself or a god. That is why there are so many names, because it is a very orderly process. It starts from chaos, but as soon as a component in chaos that isn’t as chaotic as the others begins to crystallize, it can be distinguished, so it goes from nonspecific to more specific all the time. This means that here you get a new beginning which is creation itself. Nothingness is nothing in itself; Tuna is the possibility of something becoming; everything arises through this possibility. But becoming itself as such also has a name called Keprer, which means «the one who results» or «the one who will be». He is also a god who is the very dynamic of the whole.
When Atun breaks free from the loops of snakes is a metaphor for what the creation of the world will be like later. One interpretation of the metaphor is that he frees himself from the snares of the serpent; another interpretation is that nothingness also called water rises to Nuhn like the earth, and when the earth rises above the water you can distinguish the earth from the water. (Now you can think about the Bible’s creation story again, if you wish.) This means that Tuna must thwart or fight the water or the snake in order for it to exist; In a sense he must kill the serpent, fight against chaos. When he has done so, when he has set his own limit to chaos and thus killed the serpent or raised the earth above the water, then a tree grows from the loops of the dead serpent, and it is the tree of the world, and in its branches is the world; it is what the world is and will be, that is where we live.
This is not easy to understand, and it is not easy to try to describe and explain reasonably easily and clearly, but I think it is worth the effort. If you begin to understand some kind of principle behind ancient Egyptian thought, if you begin to have some kind of hunch and get at least a little bit of in, then you will have a basis for understanding many other later myths, such as some cited in The Story in the Mirror and my other writings.
I mentioned Keprer, «the one who will be.» To the same extent that Atun attracts the energies of Keprer, Atun becomes Ra, so we actually have a trinity here: Atun, the creative principle itself; Keprer, the one who will be or will become; and Ra as the result of it all. There is some kind of metaphorical or symbolic logic here; I can feel it clearly anyway. Now it becomes really equivocal, you could say: now Atun has split itself, now Atun exists, now there is this trinity of Atun, Keprer and Ra. And what does Tuna do? We understood so much that Tuna is, by definition, productive; it is the very essence of productivity. It can do nothing but exhale and become the world, overflow. Atun tells how the very act of creating the world was:
«I am the one Atun. It was in Heliopolis that my phallus was erected. I just loved it and orgasmed, where brothers Shu and Tefnut were born.»[38]
Thus, the world emerged from a «divine masturbation» in Heliopolis. (Sorry for the sarcasm, but the phrase is literal and I think it’s wonderful). Heliopolis is the center of the creation of the world. I like it. If we reflect on how much of what has been described here, it shows us that we, as normal Westerners, perceive this as a kind of abstract, fundamental reasoning that must be understood on some kind of theoretical level, but thus we miss the important thing. Because the key is precisely that these principles are alive, they are not theoretical concepts; they are alive and therefore are perceptual principles. Remember that we said that Ra was the light of the radiant sun, Ra is the sun and can be perceived and felt directly; We know that He is a prerequisite for all life here on Earth. And the same here: the very creation of the world through a creative act. What is our equivalent of a creative act? It’s our sexuality, so simple. We produce our own offspring. Creativity not in the metaphorical sense but literally of creation. So, before there were masculine and feminine principles, but a single triune god, how was creativity drawn? How is it described symbolically and metaphorically by the ancient Egyptians? For masturbation, of course! And what is the consequence of this? Two new gods are born, Shu and Tefnut, who become the feminine and masculine principles. This is how a duality is defined here from what has been a unity until now. It is understood that the ancient Egyptians must have had another… what can be said? To use such symbols, to describe the creation of the world in this way, for me the way of thinking here is entirely experimental, and very concrete. In some way they have distilled what is concrete, that we feel it and can experience. What’s behind it in some energetic way, and they’ve given it a name and said that these energies are gods, that they’re the ones who manifest in the world, that they manifest in everything that we can perceive.
Conclusion: Return to the sources to get out of the cage (and remember that everything was born from an orgasm)
We have walked along paths of centuries: from the Renaissance that rediscovered the Corpus Hermeticum, through Bruno’s bonfire, the cunning amputation of Descartes, to the Egyptian worldview where subject and object embrace, where the sun is Ra and the river is a living god. Throughout this journey, one word resounds like a drum of initiation: Ad Fontes. To the sources. To the first waters.
But now, at the end of the road, let me tell you the secret that the ancient Egyptians kept in their temples and that the Hermeticists whispered in the ear of their disciples: the universe was not born of a mandate, nor of a dry law, nor of a cold architect. It was born out of an act of pleasure. Of the masturbation of Tuna in Heliopolis. Of a divine orgasm that still vibrates in every grain of sand, in every cell of your body, in every star that flickers above your head tonight.
Ridiculous? Maybe. But think: what other force do you know that is capable of creating something out of nothing? Love creates, yes, but love needs an object. The solitary pleasure of a self-sufficient god: that is the source. That is the ultimate Ad Fontes. The world is not a machine, it is a frozen ecstasy. That’s why it hurts and that’s why it’s beautiful. That is why we destroy it and that is why we love it.
The man is still locked outside his cage, as Valéry said. But the cage does not have a padlock. Because the cage is the dualism that we invent to be afraid of pleasure. Not to remember that we are children of that cosmic orgasm. Not to see that the forest we cut down is the flesh of a god, and that the river we poison is his spilled semen.
It is not a question of returning to a past of pyramids and papyrus. It is a matter of remembering, in the midst of this world split in two by Descartes and his heirs, that unity never disappeared. It is there, beneath the surface, like Resertepy beneath time. Hoping that we will stop being afraid and masturbate sorry, let’s focus on the creative spark that we carry inside.
As the dolphins returned to the sea, perhaps we should return to that living land where the sun is Ra and the night is Nut, where every act of love (or joyful solitude) repeats the creation of the world. Not backwards in time, but inwards, towards that point where the internal and the external touch and merge.
Because the key to the cage is not in the future. It’s in the sources. In the laughter of a self-satisfying god. In the certainty that the universe, with all its wars and its ecological crises, with all its computers and its bombs, is nothing more than the result of the masturbation of the gods.
And if that is not poetry and mysticism at the same time, let the inquisitor Bellarmine come and explain it to me.
Ad fontes.
Bibliography
- Allen, James, P. The ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts. Atlanta: SBL Press, 2005.
- Assmann, Jan. Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt. Barcelona: Paidós. 2001.
- Copenhaver, Brian P. Hermética: The Greek Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius. Cambridge: CUP, 1992.
- Dobbs, Betty Jo Teeter. The Foundations of Newton ́s Alchemy. Cambridge: CUP, 1975.
- Finocchiaro, Maurice A. The Galileo Affair: A Documentary History. Berkeley: UC Press, 1989.
- Hornung, Erik. Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt. Ithaca: Cornell UO, 1982.
- Merchant, Carolyn. The Death of Nature. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1980.
- Pico della Mirandola: Discourse on the dignity of man. Madrid: Tecnos, 2019.
- Yates, Frances A. Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition. London: Routledge, 1964.
[1] Paul Valéry, Moralities 1932? The exact quote in French: «L’homme est un animal enfermé hors de sa cage».
[2] History in the Mirror is an unpublished work by the author of this essay, where he develops a critical vision of the history of ideas. https://tinku.org/global/la-historia-en-el-espejo/
[3] On the constructive mystery of the pyramids, see Mark Lehner, The Complete Pyramids (London: Thames & Hudson, 1997). For the Mesoamerican pyramids, see Leonardo López Luján, The Pyramids of Teotihuacan (Mexico: FCE, 2016).
[4] The notion of the «Middle Ages» as an invention of the Renaissance is a classic theme of historiography. Cf. Jackes Le Goff, Was Europe Born in the Middle Ages? (Barcelona: Crítica, 2003), especially the chapter on the twelfth-century renaissance.
[5] On the subject Ad fontes en el humanismo renacentista, se Paul Oskar Kristeller, El pensamiento renacentista y sus fuentes (México: FCE, 1982), pp. 45-67.
[6] Vatican: The Hidden World. Documentary produced by National Geographic (2011). Author’s note.
[7] Galileo’s abjuration before the Inquisition on June 22, 1633. The original text is preserved in the Vatican Secret Archives. See Maurice A. Finocchiaro, The Galileo Affair: A Documentary History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), pp. 287-291.
[8] On the dating of this subject, see Brian P. Copenhaver’s edition, Hermetic: The Greek Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), The approximate date (2nd-3rd centuries AD,) was established by Isaac Casaubon in 1614, although it contains older materials.
[9] Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499) relates this anecdote in his letter to Giovanni Cavalcanti. Cf. Marsilio Ficino. Tree Books on Life, ed. Carol V. Kaske (Tempe: MRTS, 1989), p.8.
[10] Corpus Hermeticum V.24: «Man is a mortal god, the god is an immortal man.» The Copenhagen edition translates: «For this is the human being, the living god; and the god; and the god is the in mortal human being» (CHXII, 1).
[11] Pico della Mirandola, Discourse on the Dignity of Man (1486). Spanish translation by J. de la Vega (Madrid: Tecnos, 2019).
[12] Catholic dogma Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus (Outside the Church there is no salvation), defined at the Lateran Council IV (1215) and reaffirmed at the Council of Florence (1442).
[13] Nicolaus Copernicus, De revolution ibus orbium coelestium (Nuremberg, 1543). In the preface, Copernicus mentions the inspiration of ancient authors, including Hermes Trismegistus. See Edward Rosen edition (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), p. XVI.
[14] Johannes Kepler, Myteryum Cosmographicum /1596). On the Hermetic influence on Kepler, see J.V. Field, Kepler’s Geometrical Cosmology (London: Athlone Press, 1988). Ch. 3.
[15] Giordano Bruno, Spaccio de la bestia trionfante (1584). See the edition by Miguel Ángel Granada (Madrid: Alianza, 1995). Bruno maintained that Christianity had corrupted the original Egyptian religion.
[16] The term freek is used in the original text to indicate a very strange person, a weirdo who does not care what others think. My note.
[17] The historian Frances A. Yates was a pioneer in demonstrating the influence of Hermeticism on the scientific revolution. Cf. Frances A. Yates Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (London: Routledge, 1964). Also, The Rocicrucian Enlightment (1972).
[18] The trial and execution of Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) are documented in Luigi Firpo, II Trial of Giordano Bruno (Naples: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 1993). He was burned at the stake in Piazza dei Fiori, Rome, on February 17, 19600.
[19] Tommaso Campanella, La città del sole (1602). Spanish translation by J. M. Bermejo (Madrid: Tecnos, 2006). Campanella spent 27 years in prison for his participation in the Calabrian revolt (1599).
[20] The political interpretation of the Galileo case has been developed by Pietro Redondi, Galileo heretic (Madrid: Alianza, 1990). Redondi maintains that the real charge was hermeticism, not Copernicanism.
[21] Marin Mersenne (1588-1648) was a fierce critic of Hermeticism and a defender of mechanistic philosophy. Cf. Mersenne, L’Impiété des déistes (1624). Also, Peter Dear, Mersenne and the Learning of the schools (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1988).
[22] The relationship between Cartesian dualism and ecological crisis has been explored by philosophers such as Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1980); and Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature (London: Routledge, 1993).
[23] For example, the biologist Rupert Swheldrake with his Theory of Morphic Resonance, or the physicist David Bohm with his notion of implicate order, Cf. Rupert Sheldrake, A New Science of Life – London: Blond; Briggs, 1981. David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order. London: Routledge, 1980.
[24] On La Prisca Sapientia in Newton, see J. E. Mc Guiere and P.M. Rattansi «Newton and the Pipes of Pan», Notes and Records of the Royal Society 21 ¿1966? pp. 108=143. Also, Michael White, Issac Newton: The Last Sorcerer London: Fourt Estate, 19997?
[25] On this concept see Jan Assmann, Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt. Barcelona: Paidós, 2001 Also Erik Hornung, Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt: The One and the Many ¿Ithaca: Cornell UP. 1982?
[26] Legend has it that at first there was no light. There was only darkness and a large expanse of water with the name of Nun. Nun’s power was so great that from within the gloom he sprouted a large, glowing egg. And from inside that egg came Ra. Ra is the god of the sky, God of the sun and the origin of life in Egyptian mythology. Ra is the symbol of sunlight, creator of life, responsible for the cycle of death and resurrection. My Note
[27] The influence of Egyptian cosmogony on Plato has been defended by authors such as G.S. Kirk, J.E. Raven and M. Schofield, The Pre-Socratic Philosophers Madrid: Gredos, 1987, although it remains controversial. Plato himself in the Timaeus 22b? he makes the Egyptian priest say: «You Greeks are children».
[28] Should this methodological warning avoid the «Rationalism» that translates ancient experiences into mere constructions? It is typical of the Egyptology of Henri Frankfort, Ancient Egyptian Religion ¿New York: Columbia UP, 1948, and also of Jan Assman, Moses el Egyptian ¿Madrid: Oberon, 2003?
[29] Horus is one of the most prominent and ancient deities in Egyptian mythology, frequently depicted with a falcon’s head and a human body. Known as the god of the sky, war and hunting. Horus was the son of Osiris and Isis, and played a crucial role as the protector of the pharaoh and symbol of legitimate kingship, the order Ma’at? And the victory of light over chaos.
[30] Thoth was considered the god of wisdom and had authority over all the gods. He was also the inventor of writing, patron saint of scribes, of the arts and sciences. As the god of writing, he was the inventor of all words, of articulate language. Note mine, see also Erik Hornung, The One and the Multiples.
[31] This range is enormously wide and the figure of 36,000 years seems completely crazy, it is not my mistake, but a fact that appears in many popular sources that I have faithfully collected. Although, it lacks any historical or archaeological foundation.
[32] The translation of the Tabula Smaragdina by Isaac Newton is found in the Keynes manuscripts Kings College, Cambridge? See Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs’s edition, The Foundations of Newton’s Alchemy Cambridge: CUP, 1975? The Spanish translation he presents is an adaptation of Newton’s English version.
[33] On Boyle and alumina, see Lawrence M. Principe, The Aspiring Adept: Robert Boyle and His Alchemical Quest Princeton: PUP, 1998? On Newton the alchemist, Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs, The Janus Faces of Genius: The Role of Alchemy in Newton’s Thought Cambridge: CUP, 1991?
[34] Source of the adapted translation: BBC Mundo, «The Emerald Tablet: the mysterious text that fascinated Newton and other great scientists», available at https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias=37364158 (accessed in 2026). Author’s Note
[35] The category of «empathetic researchers» is associated with the tradition of vertehen (understanding) in the history of religions, from Rudolf Otto to Mircea Eliade. Cf. Mircea Eliade, Lo sagrado y lo profano (Madrid: Guadarrama, 1967).
[36] Osiris is the god of the dead and owner of the underworld, he also symbolizes resurrection and fertility, son of Nut and Geb, whose brothers were Seth, Isis, and Nephthys. He was very famous among all the Egyptians whom he taught to work the land, respect the laws and worship the Egyptian gods. Note mine, see also Jan Assmann, Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt.
[37] In his philosophy, Plato establishes a strong differentiation between what we perceive through the senses and what we can come to know through reasoning about what he calls «forms» or «ideas». Correctly combined in a language of their own (dialectical method), these forms must be the basis of scientific knowledge, and must also allow us to explain the world shown by the senses, which is subject to constant change.
[38] On the myth of Heliopolis and the theogony of Atun, see the translation of the texts of the Pyramids (unas, Pyramid of Nails, 5th dynasty). Also, James P. Alle, The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2005). The phrase «divine masturbation» appears in the pyramid texts (Pyramid of nails, §1248) my note.
Angel Ontiveros Cabrera
Villa Tunari 2026
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