By David Gosselin
“And men go abroad to admire the heights of mountains, the mighty waves of the sea, the broad tides of rivers, the compass of the ocean, and the circuits of the stars, yet pass over the mystery of themselves without a thought.”
― St. Augustine of Hippo, Confessions
Lamenting the loss of ancient mysteries and traditions has become popular in our modern age, but is man really lacking mystery in the twenty-first century? Or have many today simply failed to appreciate the mystery that is modern Western civilization? After all, what could be more mysterious and magical to an archaic man and ancient civilizations than the miracle that is the modern West? With its previously unimagined abundance, light-speed communication, wealth of scientific marvels and industrialized power, both the most ardent Atlanticists and archaic observers of the ancient world would be compelled to believe our civilization had fallen under the spell of the most powerful wizards the world had ever seen.
But whence did this magic actually spring and what is its true source?
For some the question has become obsolete. For instance, according to a World Economic Forum (WEF) guru and modern H.G. Wells devotee like Yuval Hariri, humans are no longer “mysterious souls,” but “hackable animals.” Soon, powerful AIs will emerge as the new oracles of a technetronic age, outpacing humans in almost every field. This “singularity point” will render much of humanity superfluous, leading to the emergence of a new “global useless class.”
So the modern transhumanist and AI occultists tell us.
But is any of this true? And is there some principled way to verify claims that the human mind can be replaced by sophisticated pattern recognition or complex quantitative analysis conducted by algorithms? Were the birth of Renaissance marvels like Brunelleschi’s Florentine duomo or Da Vinci’s Last Supper really just the product of clever pattern recognition, or was there something more intangible, yet knowable, in these celebrated works which married science and art on a fundamentally new level? Said otherwise, however many 1s and 0s are added to AI’s computing power, at what point does a creative human soul capable of experiencing creative epiphanies emerge?
If we can wrestle with this question, the rest becomes detail.
To situate the nature of this strategic question today, which transhumanists and AI cults believe is a settled matter, we’ll revisit the magically transformative moment that was the European Golden Renaissance. In doing so, we’ll demonstrate that the nature of our modern crisis has little to do with lack of mystery but if anything, the forgetting of the mystery that lies at the heart of Western civilization.
The Changing Images of Man
To truly re-acquaint ourselves with the mystery that is modern Western civilization, consider the often obscured history of the European Golden Renaissance. Ironically, the strategic nature of this turning point was captured with considerable awareness by none other than those forces dedicated to repatterning the very Western Classical and Judeo-Christian image of man which made the Renaissance possible in the first place.
The strategic assessment in question is found in the pivotal 1982 “Changing Images of Man” document, published by the Stanford Research Institute (SRI). As the name suggests, the authors concern themselves with the evolution of man’s own “self-image,” from the early days of archaic Greek man to Judeo-Christian Renaissance man.
The SRI authors write:
“In contrast to the Greek notion of ‘man,’ the Judeo-Christian view holds that “man” is essentially separate from the rightful master over nature. This view inspired a sharp rate of increase in technological advances in Western Europe throughout the Medieval period. On the other hand, the severe limitations of scholastic methodology, and the restrictive views of the Church, prevented the formulation of an adequate scientific paradigm. It was not until the Renaissance brought a new climate of individualism and free inquiry that the necessary conditions for a new paradigm were provided.
“Interestingly, the Renaissance scholars turned to the Greeks to rediscover the empirical method. The Greeks possessed an objective science of things ‘out there,’ which D. Campbell (1959) terms the ‘epistemology of the other.’ This was the basic notion that nature was governed by laws and principles which could be discovered, and it was this that the Renaissance scholars then developed into science as we have come to know it.”
We should note that the particular ivy league institution in question, located in Stanford, California, was originally called the Stanford Research Institute, but rebranded itself plainly as “the SRI” due to blowback caused by its notorious “counterinsurgency studies for Southeast Asia” i.e., research into sadistic bombing and psychological terror campaigns conducted during the Vietnam war and other foreign expeditions led by the Anglo-American establishment. As a result of public outcry and anti-war movements, the SRI chose to legally distance itself from Stanford University to continue its cutting-edge “research” away from public scrutiny and prying eyes.
Surprisingly, this newly rebranded research organ was known for its innovative mechanical and technical engineering research, yet its “Changing Images of Man” program had as its aim the creation of a new “spiritual” paradigm, famously dubbed the “New Age.”
The purpose of this program would be to entice Western civilization away from what was traditionally thought of as “progress,” that is, the kind of scientific and economic development which made modern abundance and “free inquiry” possible. In its stead, an inner-directed spiritualized view of man centered on self-improvement and evolutionary “consciousness” would fit the bill.
The SRI authors write:
“The new paradigm will likely incorporate some kind of concept of hierarchical level of consciousness, or levels of subjective experience. These will be distinguishable in the sense that concepts and metaphors appropriate to one level do not necessarily fit another. They will be hierarchical, not in the sense that one is higher than another on some value scale, but in the sense of structural hierarchy, and also in the sense that the consciousness of intense moments of creativity are accompanied by, in some testable meaning, more awareness than times of ‘ordinary consciousness,’ and those in turn involve more awareness than deep sleep.
“The notion of a spectrum of potential consciousness connotes extending the range of recognized ‘unconscious’ processes (i.e. processes of which we are not usually conscious although the potentiality appears to be present of experiencing them directly) to include a vast range of reported experience in the provinces of creative imagination, ‘cosmic consciousness,’ aesthetic and mystical experience, psychic phenomena, and the occult.”
As should become clear, the sleight of hand and trickery comes by way of shifting the emphasis from a crudely framed traditional notion of progress in the outward material world to an inner “spiritual” progress, with the individual sacredness of man supplanted by a collective Gaia-centric “consciousness”:
The authors write:
“The desirability of this characteristic of the new Image is based on the view that the proper end of all individual experience is the evolutionary and harmonious development of the emergent self (both as a person and as a part of wide collectivities), and that the appropriate function of social institutions is to create an environment which will foster that process. This is the ethic which must supersede the man-over-nature ethic and the material-growth-and-consumption ethic which have given rise to a large portion of man’s problems as he became increasingly preoccupied with solely material aspects of exploiting and controlling nature for selfish ends on a fragile and finite planet where the pursuit of such goals can be suicidal.”
So, it’s become common among many to view technology and science as a kind of unnatural, demonic force in the modern world, in contrast with the pure and liberating force of nature. The irony is that the forces of Magna Mater, Gaia, Saturn—Mother Nature and devouring Time—were traditionally regarded as rather ruthless and indifferent towards the plight of feeble humanity. On the other hand, the fire-bringing Titan Prometheus was the compassionate figure who came to the defense of mankind, sacrificing his own comforts and power to liberate humanity from the backward state imposed by the son of Saturn, Zeus, and his Olympian tribe.
And indeed, there may be more historical truth behind some of these myths than some let on. For instance, in the Schiller Institute’s “Prometheus and Europe,” historian and economist Lyndon Larouche describes the likely historical background for the later mythologized story of Prometheus:
“About 12,000 years ago, or somewhat earlier, a flotilla of ships arrived from the Atlantic Ocean, to found a colony in the region of modern Morocco, near the Straits of Gibraltar, in the vicinity of the Atlas Mountains. The colonists found there a relatively primitive culture, that of the ancient Berbers, whom the colonists educated in methods of agriculture, and made subjects of the colony. After a time, the sons of a royal concubine, Olympia, conspired to murder the tyrannical ruler, and seize power for themselves. The leading figure among these revolting sons of Olympia, was Zeus.
“Prometheus was one of the legitimate heirs to the power of the colony. He joined the Olympians in the opposition to the tyranny itself, but fought against the brutalizing new tyranny which the patricidal sons of Olympia imposed upon the Berber population, over the corpse of Zeus’s butchered father.
“This occurred within the same, Peoples of the Sea, colony of the Atlas region, which extended its cultural impact throughout the Mediterranean littoral, to the included effect of participating in the founding of Egypt at a time now about 10,000 years ago.
…
“The legacy of these events in the ancient Atlas region, and the policy-fight between Prometheus and the Olympians, persisted so, somehow, over the intervening millennia, to emerge as the pagan mythology of Olympus, as reflected in such places as the Homeric epics.”
As will become much clearer after this introductory section, the attempt to reframe the historically Promethean-oriented Judeo-Christian image as it emerged in the Renaissance was articulated by none other than the current Jesuit-trained head of the Catholic Church, Pope Francis.
In his 2015 Laudato Si encyclical, Francis writes:
“An inadequate presentation of Christian anthropology gave rise to a wrong understanding of the relationship between human beings and the world. Often, what was handed on was a Promethean vision of mastery over the world.”
The Society of Jesus follower, Pope Francis, articulates precisely the issue dealt with by the SRI, with the shared purpose of advancing a more Gaia-centric, or “Green” view, both within and without the Christian world. Hence the opening prayer of Francis’ 2015 encyclical:
“Praise be to you, my Lord, through our Sister, Mother Earth, who sustains and governs us, and who produces various fruit with coloured flowers and herbs. This sister now cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her.”
For the SRI and related occultist, gnostic, and intelligence operations posing as religious orders, including the Society of Jesus, the Templars, Knights of Jerusalem etc., the emergence of this new anti-Promethean ethic would be heralded as a so-called “New Age,” or “Age of Aquarius,” a new more “sustainable” social contract, recently promoted as leading WEF spokesman King Charles’ “Terra Carta.” In economic terms, the SRI would label this an age of “New Scarcity,” while the transhumanist-orientated AI occultists over at the WEF would call it a “Circular Economy.” The only problem is this “new paradigm” and its related image of man would involve very little by way of the new. Rather, it would serve to revive very old, archaic and gnostic views.
As the SRI researchers note themselves:
“The Gnostics, whose beliefs appear to have been a synthesis of Babylonian, Indian, and Egyptian, as well as Semitic and Zoroastrian thought, took another view. Agreeing with the Semitic belief in one Eternal and Supreme Being, and the Zoroastrian view of the World and its unredeemed citizens as savable, the Gnostics took as central ‘saving’ power of gnosis-extraordinary and experientially intimate knowledge of the mysteries of existence.
“Rather than worry about elevating both the material and creative state of mankind through scientific discovery and classical artistic forms of creativity, which have been at the heart of every renaissance in both the East and West, the aim of SRI occultists would be to promote countless new forms of “experiential” knowledge, magic, and the mysticism of archaic mystery schools. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the fad of countless New Age gurus promoting the use of magical mind-opening substances under the guise of a “psychedelic renaissance” and the rebirth of ancient Eleusinian mysteries. The same is also evident in the obsession with the hidden “gnosis” of archaic civilizations and UFOs, currently being mainlined into the culture both mainstream media and numerous big-name podcasts.”
But we digress!
Going back to the SRI, the Changing Images of Man authors contrast the question of salvation as treated by traditional Christianity with the Gnostic view of salvation through the sacred “gnosis” hidden across various dimensions of the world. The former view holds that salvation can never be fully attained in this world or achieved strictly by man alone; the latter believes it can, especially when man re-acquaints himself with the archaic mysteries and wisdom of supernatural beings living among us right now.
The SRI authors write:
“The import of this view, as contrasted with the view which ultimately came to be the ‘official’ one, is portrayed by the Gospel according to Thomas: His disciples said to Him: When will the Kingdom come? Jesus said: It will not come by expectation; they will not say: ‘See there.’ But the Kingdom of the Father is spread upon the earth and men do not see it. (Saying 113) This tension between the Gnostic understanding of apocalyptic symbolism and that of the Early Church which condemned it as heretical is the essence of what is sometimes called “the Judeo-Christian Problem.” Is an apocalyptic Messiah to come (or come again) and thus grandly save the elect from evil, or is the ‘Kingdom of the Father’ already here within us, within ourselves and our world-as is ‘Buddha-consciousness’ and the ‘Mother Light’-only waiting to be recognized and fulfilled?”
Keying off extensive anthropological research into archaic tribes, ancient mythology, and comparative religious studies, the authors outline the requirements for a new image of man which could adapt Judeo-Christian elements into a new syncretic model, leading to an essentially Gaia-centric view which removes the distinction between Man and Nature, a notion at the very heart of the Judeo-Christian image.
“The desirability of this characteristic of the new Image is based on the view that the proper end of all individual experience is the evolutionary and harmonious development of the emergent self (both as a person and as a part of wide collectivities), and that the appropriate function of social institutions is to create an environment which will foster that process. This is the ethic which must supersede the man-over-nature ethic and the material-growth-and-consumption ethic which have given rise to a large portion of man’s problems as he became increasingly preoccupied with solely material aspects of exploiting and controlling nature for selfish ends on a fragile and finite planet where the pursuit of such goals can be suicidal.”
However, much to their chagrin the authors note that the gnostic view had to go “underground”:
“Because the Gnostic path was condemned as heretical, of necessity it went underground, and hence its influence on our culture is much less visible than are the effects of the orthodox views. It and views like it, however, have been kept alive by secret societies such as the Sufis, Freemasons, and Rosicrucians, whose influence on the founding of the United States is attested to by the symbolism of the Great Seal of the United States, on the back of the dollar bill. The Semitic/Zoroastrian/orthodox Christian image meanwhile came into dominance in Western Europe. This image of the ‘human as separate’ laid the groundwork for the industrial revolution to come.”
And this is where we come face to face with the real mystery which modern magicians would prefer to obscure with promises of new worldly salvation and revelation by returning into the loving arms of “Mother Nature.”
The Mystery of the Renaissance
“But I know that the capacity which maketh union possible is naught else save likeness. And incapacity springeth from lack of likeness. If, therefore, I have rendered myself by all possible means like unto Thy goodness, then, according to the degree of that likeness, I shall be capable of the truth.”
-Nicholas of Cusa, The Vision of God
The new “climate of individualism and free inquiry” and the rejection of scholastic methodology noted by SRI researchers is perhaps nowhere better captured than in a letter by one of the leading classical humanist scholars of the Golden Renaissance, Francesco Petrarch.
In “De Sui ipsius et Multorum Ignorantia” (On his own Ignorance and that of Many Others), Petrarch writes of the obsession with the Aristotelian modes of thinking dominating the scholastic world and medieval Church, and the fetishisms for authority which tended to accompany these pseudo-intellectual currents:
“Sometimes I asked, with a smile, how Aristotle could have known that, for it was not proven by the light of reason, nor could it be tested by experiment. At that they would fall silent, in surprise and anger, as if they regarded me as a blasphemer who asked any proof beyond the authority of Aristotle. So we bid fair to be no longer philosophers, lovers of the truth, but Aristotelians… reviving the absurd custom which permits us to ask no question except whether he said it…. I believe, indeed, that Aristotle was a great man and that he knew much; yet he was but a man, and therefore something, nay, many things, may have escaped him. I will say more…. I am confident, beyond a doubt, that he was in error all his life, not only as regards small matters, where a mistake counts for little, but in the most weighty questions, where his supreme interests were involved. And although he has said much of happiness, both at the beginning and the end of his Ethics, I dare assert, let my critics exclaim as they may, that he was so completely ignorant of true happiness that the opinions upon this matter of any pious old woman, or devout fisherman, shepherd, or farmer, would, if not so fine-spun, be more to the point than his.”
Petrarch says, “for it was not proven by the light of reason, nor could it be tested by experiment.” What this quintessential classical humanist captures in his biting criticism of the reigning Aristotelian/Scholastic schools is the re-discovery of the Classical Greek spirit of investigation i.e., the Socratic method, newly revived within the context of the Judeo-Christian image of man. In the latter, man was understood as imago viva dei and capax dei, that is, a living image of God (big G) capable of godly things (small g), by virtue of the light of his reason. The implication was that there existed a coincidence between man and God, the microcosm and macrocosm, the laws governing the mind of man and the laws governing the cosmos at large.
This view is embodied in the image of Jesus Christ, who was understood as both perfectly man and perfectly divine, such that through the imitation of Christ—the Logos made flesh—each individual could directly imitate the divine. In previous times, knowledge of the divine and mystical revelation was regulated by a pantheon of archaic mystery schools, magicians and an “Elect” whose job it was to control the minds of the population. This was largely achieved by drawing people into a never-ending Daedalean maze of mysticism and superstition, replete with elaborate illusions and rituals conferring an aura of sacred wisdom and hidden or “occult” knowledge on its devoted initiates and their “Elect.”
The Labyrinth of Crete, ca. 1551 – 1558 by by Hieronymus Cock after Matthijs Cock
Knowledge of any kind of higher causality beyond one’s immediate perception was carefully guarded by a maze of mist and magic conjured by a sacred magician class. This naturally led to a superstition-laden worldview in which man’s understanding of God, the cosmos and himself was essentially beyond Reason, accessible only through an ever-winding labyrinth of occult rites, symbols and rituals which required one to put aside his or her powers of reason.
The historical basis for the development of this kind of magical system and its earlier proto-magician class of tribal initiates is captured in James George Frazer’s epic tome on comparative religion and mythology, The Golden Bough:
“For when the welfare of the tribe is supposed to depend on the performance of these magical rites, the magician rises into a position of much influence and repute, and may readily acquire the rank and authority of a chief or king. The profession accordingly draws into its ranks some of the ablest and most ambitious men of the tribe, because it holds out to them a prospect of honor, wealth, and power such as hardly any other career could offer. The acuter minds perceive how easy it is to dupe their weaker brother and to play on his superstition or their own advantage. Not that the sorcerer is always a knave and impostor; he is often sincerely convinced that he really possess those wonderful powers which the credulity of his fellows ascribes to him. But the more sagacious he is, the more likely he is to see through the fallacies which impose on duller wits. Thus the ablest members of the profession must tend to be more or less conscious deceivers; and it is just these men who in virtue of their superior ability will generally come to the top and win for themselves positions of the highest dignity and the most commanding authority.”
With the advent of Christianity, the relationship between man and God, the material and the immaterial, the One and the Many, were bridged in a way they had never been before. When paired with the rediscovery of the Classical Greek epistemological method of inquiry into the cosmos and laws of nature, typified by the method elaborated in Plato’s Timaeus dialogue, it led to something truly unexpected and miraculous, catching the magicians and oligarchical powers dominating the old world by sheer surprise.
On the other hand, the once-untouchable Aristotelian philosophical system, which came to be the dominant system in the world of pseudo-Christian Byzantine imperial politics, had to take a back seat to a revitalized Socratic and Platonic method, which had been preserved by the unwavering determination of a few diligent scholars, priests and intellectuals, especially St. Augustine of Hippo.
The ancient quarrel is perhaps best summarized in “The Strategic Significance of the Ecumenical Negotiations” published by the Executive Intelligence Review. There, the historical continuity of the debate between the Aristotelian and Platonist currents and their roles in shaping the debate around the image of man is succinctly outlined.
As the article describes, the struggle can be traced along the lines of a historical contention over doctrinal matters between the Western and Eastern Christian Churches since their virtual creation. To the lay the groundwork for what comes in the second half of this essay, and to appreciate the full implications of this debate and its strategic relevance for the possibility of a new Renaissance today, we will quote generously:
“The formal history of the doctrine is this. The defense of the principled features of the doctrine, for both Judaism and later for Christianity, was first elaborated to the best of our present knowledge by Philo Judaeus of Alexandria. The most concise statement of the doctrine occurs in the opening verses of the New Testament Gospel of St. John, as reaffirmed with emphasis by the Nicene faith, inclusive of the Roman Catholic version of the Nicaean Credo.
“All Western Christianity is founded on the elaborated defense of this doctrine by St. Augustine.
“In Eastern Christianity, the top-down control of the church apparatus by the cult-linked Roman Imperial oligarchy, from the evil Emperor Constantine through the Emperor Justinian and others, limited the defense of Christianity to principally the Platonic faction of the Greek-speaking world, those forces identified over centuries to the present date by their defense of the teaching of the classical Greek associated with the span from Homer into Plato. The prolonged control of the leadership of the Eastern Church by pseudo-Christian cultists, typified by Patriarch Gennadios during the 15th century, caused a cleavage between the Western and Eastern churches, a cleavage defined by the cultist pseudo-Christian’s rejection of the perfect consubstantiality of the Trinity.
…
“The affinity of the Eastern Platonic Fathers to the subsequent doctrine of St. Augustine is to be found in the decrees and resolutions of the first two Ecumenical Councils, of Nicaea and Constantinople, which produced two basic tenets of Christianity, the Nicaean Credo, a liturgical affirmation of faith in the Triune God; and the broader body of doctrine, known as the Nicene faith, which, independently of liturgical forms, affirms the incarnated Christ to be consubstantial, or homoousios, with God the Father. The Eastern Platonic Fathers, always a minority, had to struggle at all times against the authority of the Emperor and simultaneously against the numerically overwhelming Egyptian and related cults whose main effort centered in challenging under various guises, the homoousios, or consubstantial nature of the Christ; some cult-heresies asserted Christ to be only divine and not human, others only human and not divine, some both divine and human but whose divine nature is distinct from that of the Father, or from that of the Father and the Holy Spirit; in this vast mess of cultist challenges to Christianity, the most severe menace for a long time was the cult of Sabellians who asserted Christ’s exclusively divine nature, complementing the Arian heresy, similar to modern “Liberation Theology”; the ordinary bishops who assembled at Nicaea and Constantinople to condemn the Arian heresy, generally feared that admission of the homoousios clause would open the floodgates of the Sabellian heresy. It took the exceptional efforts of three outstanding Platonist Fathers, St. Basil of Caesarea, St. Gregory of Nazianzus, and St. John Chrysostom, to enforce, by means of maneuvers and compromises, the homoousios doctrine.
“Part of the compromise was the omission of the Filioque from the liturgical credo of the Eastern Church, i.e., the declaration that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and from the Son (Filioque in Latin). St. Augustine and the Western Fathers, struggling at the outskirts of the Empire to bring barbarian tribes into civilization, could not afford to make such a compromise on penalty of seeing their evangelizing work fail; the practical issue concealed behind consubstantiality, homoousios, and its corollary matter of the Filioque, was: how to draw man into civilized life by inspiring him to strive to become “godlike” through imitation of the incarnated Christ, the God-Man who is homoousios, consubstantial of God.
“The Roman Imperial aristocracy at Constantinople, with the Emperor at its head, retaliated by launching a systematic struggle against Platonism throughout the Eastern Empire. It is most precise to say that what is popularly derided as “Byzantine politics” was founded during the 313-529 period as a high-level epistemological warfare between Platonism and Aristotelianism.”
Finally, the practical political implications for the modern image of man stemming from what might otherwise appear to be obscure theological matters becomes more evident:
“The politics of the Byzantine Empire were throughout its existence, a war between two irreconcilable philosophical outlooks. On balance, the Aristotelian faction maintained the upper hand. But the Platonic challenge was formidable throughout. In the first phase after the early Ecumenical Councils, the evil cult-Aristotelian nobility of Byzantium reacted by means of a general legal, administrative, and educational reform known as the Justinian Reform, which culminated in 529 with a set of Imperial decrees outlawing the teaching of Attic Greek, prohibiting the appellation “Greek” to citizens of the Empire and juridically equating Greek to “pagan,” and finally, shutting down the Platonic Academy at Athens—then going through the 10th century of its existence, the most ancient educational and political institution in the world.”
As is well-known, the Renaissance involved a rediscovery of original Greek texts and interest in learning Classical Greek, knowledge of which had been virtually lost due to the real-world political situation outlined above. Without this, the Renaissance would have never been possible.
Notably, the scholastic and related dogmas included Aristotle’s famous law of non-contradiction, which held that a thing could not be both A and not-A. But this iron-clad law posed a paradox for any thinking Christian, Platonist, or Humanist. For, how could man be both earthly and divine? Or what lies between motion and rest? Are they subsumed by what must necessarily be a higher notion of potential, which enfolds both? If man was by his nature strictly finite, how could he fathom the infinite, or know it within himself? How could the bridge between the material and immaterial, Ideas and the physical reality, ever be bridged?
Unless some higher epistemological approach existed, man was forever bound by the narrow confines of a crude materialist logic chained to nothing but one’s most immediate sense-perceptual apprehension of reality. Thus, Aristotelian and scholastic methodologies made it wholly impossible to resolve any of the seeming contradictions, making modern science virtually impossible, reduced to nothing but the trickery of a crafty wizard class.
As we’ll see in next week’s instalment, this is exactly what was overcome by the leading minds of the Golden Renaissance.
Stay tuned for our next instalment where we’ll delve into the world of Nicholas of Cusa’s “coincidence of opposites,” the Socratic art of learned ignorance, and the mystical theology of the Renaissance.