The Spear of Destiny (23rd April)
Treadwell’s Bookshop, Tavistock St W1 (www.treadwells-london.com)
This was one of the most interesting talks I’ve yet attended at Treadwell’s. The last in a series of five by the scholar James North on Hermeticism in the English Renaissance / Tudor period.
The series dealt with Anglican Christian Cabbalism and Pythagoreanism from John Dee to Francis Bacon, leaning heavily on ciphers and numerology, often centred on the numbers 17 and 19, particularly in Shakespearean prose. Some of which seemed more than just pattern recognition. Inthe final talk for example he revealed the secret Shakespearean numbers 23 and 46, linked not only to his birth/death dates, but also Psalm 46 (the 46th word of which is ‘shake’ and 46th penultimate word is ‘spear’!). It also linked this to Rosicrucianism and the mystery of the Rho (17) and Tau cross (19). Note, all these root numbers are Primes, hinting at a Neo-Pythagorean revival with a more advanced symbolic Maths (Bacon’s influence?).
The final talk focused on English occult politics and St George.
The essence of this was the thesis that during the increasing religious split in Europe,
first between Rome and the Holy Roman Empire, and then between Catholicism and Protestantism, a movement towards Christian reunification began to grow, alongside a
more general reformism (with opposition to all dualistic factions) and return to Christian origins. Central to this movement was Christian Cabbalism (with its own agenda of a Christian and Judaic reunification) and Alchemical Hermeticism (with its synthesis of Christian and Pagan themes), operating both independently and within Christian mystical circles within the Churches. This intensified with the rejection of the emerging puritanical forms of Protestantism, but more especially with the increasing perception of the Catholic Church as an ‘evil empire’, with worldly rather than spiritual interests and ambitions. This culminated in the shockwaves that followed the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of the Huguenot Protestants by the Catholic powers in France. At the core of this movement lay various secret societies, at the forefront of which were the occult orders of the age. The movement however was not itself a unified ideology but was rather a tradition, or system of principles, with various interpretations.
Shortly after this the ‘miraculous’ defeat of the Spanish Armada by the English, who saw it as ‘Divine Intervention’ against the ‘Satanic’ Catholic Empire, revived the natural inclination of the British to see themselves as the ‘chosen people’, and the reformist wing of the Tudor Elizabethan establishment thus became the foremost champions of this movement.
Central to the British mythos was the image of the twin pillars, with a ship sailing between them, popularised by its official ‘sea magus’ John Dee. Initially this was a symbol of the Pillars of Hercules passed through on the ‘journey to Atlantis’ or new land, but it also came to be regarded as the pillars of the Temple of Solomon, understood as the pillars of the Tree of Life. This became the central image of reunification, with the pillars representing everything from heaven and earth, to the ideologies that required reunification, to the projected political powers of Europe and America. All of which were part of a kind of magical dialectic which became the master formula for all theory and practise. The image was inherited by many orders, but most famously by the Freemasons who interpreted it in their own way. The ship that mediated the pillars was often forgotten, but was traditionally associated with Britain. The speaker emphasised the multiple meaning of symbols and their context dependency.
Britain’s importance was traditionally rooted in the Glastonbury Grail tradition, which via the Arthurian Mythos dovetailed with the reformative neo-chivalric fashion of the period, and the legitimising Tudor Celtic Revival. As it was St George’s Day special emphasis was placed on the role of the Order of the Garter and its central myth of George and the Dragon.
This British tradition was also appeared diverse, incorporating everyone from the elitist British Imperialists, through Shakespeare’s esoteric patriotism, to William Blake, with his libertarian visions of a New Jerusalem and the Marriage of Heaven and Hell.
The English Draconic tradition then formed the bulk of the rest of the talk. With the Dragon or Serpent typified as the Tellurian, Chthonic or Lunar power and St George as the archetypal, earthly manifestation of the Heavenly or Solar power, formerly known as Apollo (the slayer of the Delphic Serpent). Mythically this was also seen as the interaction of Apollo and Diana, or the Divine Feminine. Later in the question period St Michael was added as the more celestial form of Apollo who battles the Draconic Satan in defence of the Divine Feminine. A crucial point here was not only are the Serpent and Dragon significantly different but in themselves depend on context for meaning. The fixated ideas that the Dragon-Serpent represented instinct and femininity and Apollo represented reason and masculinity were common cultural distortions. Symbolism it was explained could be easily misinterpreted by undeveloped or narrow minds, with Wagner the classic example. Similarly the idea of a dualistic conflict between these two was also rejected in favour of mutually modifying dilectic and union. Early depictions of George and the Dragon showing a subduing rather than a killing. The Serpent was depicted in general as a feminine force but also a symbol of wisdom as well as earthly forces, while the Dragon could be a force of fertility and prima material, or a celestial power of destruction cast down into the Earth, like Typhoon (whose name meant swelling and excess). Apollo’s name also meant ‘destruction’ however. There was a sense of Taoism in all this.A major historical error was the use of such Typhoonian powers through their enslavement to divine forces, the origin of the Grimoire tradition. This reflected a mentality of the ‘ends justifying the means’.
This was expanded on by reference to Zoroastrian notions of dualism, involving the liberation of the positive forces of the Earth (from the Darkness and Fixation of Ahriman) and its union with the positive forces of Heavenly Light. Thus the Spirit penetrated and illuminated the Earth, and Darkness, which only had a negative existence anyway, vanished. This negative non-existence, of Darkness and Satan was compared to abstractions and illusions, like false beliefs and the bad credit that was currently plaguing the economy. Money itself (and perhaps commodification?) was also described as illusional, a kind of occult version of the Spectacle? Francis Bacon was evoked as a Hermetic Scientist who sought to illuminate material ignorance in a similar way.
In addition to this Indian Kundalini Yoga and Tantra were deployed to shed further light on the Draconic Solar-Lunar dualism and the wisdom giving powers of the chthonic Serpent.
I felt this might have been stretching credulity a bit, and projecting modern occult concepts into the past, however some curious supporting examples were given, such as the symbolic resonances of the name of the Grail achiever Percival with ‘Parsee (Zoroastrian) Fool’ and ‘Pierce the Veil’. This was more convincingly backed by associating this with Elizabethan literary references, which used sexual innuendo in its talk of the spear and its bearer, with its magical potency and power of penetration. There were also references to the wounded king and his blood, closely related it seemed to the blood of the menstruating woman and the wounded Dragon. All of which had the power of magical renewal. An interesting image was referred to which saw the contending horizontal forces of the Solar and Lunar powers turning a vertical axis in a spiralling motion. Arthur was related to the Great Bear, and the Pole Star, the guardian of this axis. All of which was suggestive but not conclusive.
Ending on light relief with the notion of Stella Artois as a kind of spiritual nectar, and Tony Blair as some form of anti-christ figure creating a secular version of these mysteries, that combined the worst aspects of political and religious dualism, the speaker brought the series to an end.
The talk was well received and most were sympathetic to the theses, with one criticism being the interesting comment that the ‘evil dragon’ was sometimes more attractive for ‘outsiders’ in rebellion than the Christian ethos of this Rosicrucian thesis. But the speaker had already stated that he was in many ways playing ‘angel’s advocate’ and was not necessarily supporting the cosy English Cabbalism of his historical narrative.
Likewise I wondered how the dissident ‘School of Night’ fitted into this thesis, a recalcitrant left hand path tradition? And from my own favourite paradigm, remembering James North’s earlier talk on Orphism and Dionysos, wondered where the Dionysian fitted into the equation. Perhaps as an alternative to the Dragon, given the Seven Headed Dragon form sometimes attributed to Bacchus, and Nietzsche’s Apollo – Dionysos opposition (also found in Robert Fludd’s work, which saw Apollo as Light and Dionysos as Darkness). Or given the late Greek identification of Apollo and Dionysos at a deeper level, in a more Orphic interpretation which would equate an androgynous Dionysos (often depicted in a boat) with the intermediary between Solar and Lunar, and the ship between the pillars.