Books 11 – 22
Western Spirituality
Finding Your Purpose
German post-Romantic painting of angels revealing the Grail to a devout knight
Finding yourself is one thing, but if that were all there was to it, then the eternal quest might be dreadfully self-referential. Considering Eastern ways alone, we might be led to believe that finding yourself is the sum total, the be-all and end-all, of the human situation, but the Western classics tell a different story.
Stumblebum Method
Take the tale of Parzival, for instance. This is perhaps the central classic of the Western spiritual path. Although there are contrasts, its message is not a contradiction to the perennial philosophy of the East, but an amplification, an extrapolation of the primordial wisdom of the old sages who found Divinity and the All in themselves.
At the start of the story, Parzival (German spelling, contrasted to the softer French spelling, Parsifal) is a young knight who knows next to nothing about his own personal history. He enters upon the Grail Quest, without at first knowing what he is seeking. In fact, he doesn’t know he is on a quest at all! Through one episode after another, he undergoes a series of encounters that seem accidental, while in fact they provide him with clues to his identity and his unique mission. Unlike the Eastern quest, where the seeker sets out with the deliberate intent of finding God and often has an age-old discipline of seeking (such as Yoga) already prescribed for the task, Parzival’s adventure is a slow, awkward, suspenseful process of biographic revelation, fraught with losses and setbacks. He has no predefined method to follow and the goal of his quest is not defined at the outset. He only comes to know himself and claim his unique mission as it is progressively revealed to him by life itself, through the dramatic unfolding of his life story. His spiritual progress is not programmatic, but entirely spontaneous and often erratic. This is a strange twist, beautifully and dramatically expressed in the psychological tension of the plot-line in Wolfram von Eschenbach’s version. (There are dozens of versions of the Grail Legend, most of them garbled and fragmentary, but Wolfram’s narrative is more or less complete and consistent.) Over the years I have been inclined to define Parzival’s path as the stumblebum method of initiation. The Eastern paradigm of finding yourself is exemplified in dozens of specific and sophisticated methods: Yoga, Zen sitting, Buddhist ritual and meditation, Sufi dancing. The path-of-union is time-tried and well-plotted, so that the seeker is provided with all kinds of preformulated techniques. Both means and end are clearly given. By contrast, the Western way of individuation and service is a rough-hewn track. With Parzival we are introduced to the paradigm of self-initiation. Far from being programmatic, this path is one of trial and error. Moments of spiritual revelation, sudden and spontaneous encounters with the numinous and supernatural, light up the way like flares, but the trip itself is pure serendipity.
The Sacred Calling
Ultimately, Parzival discovers that he is someone special, contrary to the Eastern wisdom that insists we are all one entity and therefore no one is special. In his long quest to become the claimant of the Grail — not by belonging to a spiritual lineage that would guarantee him the rights of succession, but by his independent, if blundering, efforts — Parzival learns that who he is does matter. In some way it deeply affects the outcome of the quest. By contrast to the paradigm of enlightenment, the Grail knight exemplifies the paradigm of salvation, for it takes someone particular to achieve a particular feat of salvation. The identification of each character in Vishnu’s dream with the Cosmic Dreamer is universal and without distinction among the dreamed entities, but the sacred calling comes to each individual in a particular way, if it comes at all.
§ It’s a stretch to say that Parzival exemplifies the paradigm of salvation! However, in the sense that Parzival may be regarded as a racial avatar of Kalki, it might sneak past the gate. It’s fair to say that such historical avatars do save their people, but this is a tenuous trope at best.
In the legend, the wasteland around the Grail Castle is a degenerating world, which even the magical regenerative power of the Grail cannot restore. The Grail King, Amfortas, is suffering from a terrible wound that causes him continual pain, but not death and relief from pain. This grave situation calls for redemption, and the redeemer must have specific qualifications. Parzival’s entire quest consists of a haphazard process of discovery in which he comes to understand how he and he alone is qualified to claim the Grail — and in the growing momentum of this realization, he finally becomes able to ask the right question. A complete experience of human reality calls for knowing both how you are no one, identical with Divinity, the All, and all other human beings, and how you are someone unique, someone identified by a special mission and an original purpose that can only be fulfilled by yourself alone, distinct from all others. Essential to the Western way is the understanding that finding yourself cannot be all there is to it, because there are many things you can discover in the process of finding yourself. It’s as if you went up to the attic to find an old pair of glasses, and in the process of searching for them, found all kinds of marvelous things — photos and souvenirs you had completely forgotten, old toys, forgotten letters, ancestral records — which reveal to you the unique design of your own experience and restore you to an awareness of your originality. The sacred calling needs the originality to be fulfilled, while the realization of “supreme identity” needs no special conditions of any kind.
Destiny is the old-fashioned term commonly applied to this sense of originality, the awareness that you have something special to do, a unique mission to accomplish. In the East there is no clue to any individual purpose of this kind, but the one unifying purpose of us all is fully and elaborately disclosed. The Western classics complete and advance this common purpose by extending it toward the discovery of an uncommon purpose, thus opening the horizons of human seeking to the new and unknown.
Snail to Star
When we read in the Svetasvatara Upanishad, “The Eternal One should be known in the presence of your very own self,” or when we hear a modern Zen master repeat for the nth time, “Ordinary mind is the Buddha,” we know it is the same thing being said, but this is not all there is to be said. This is not the final word on the human condition, although it may well be the final word on human conditioning. Asian wisdom reminds us eternally of truth that applies for us all, but in the Western path we discover the truth that applies for ourselves alone. The first is eternally invariable, the second, infinitely variable. Yes, the beyond is within. This is true for us all. But the within is outbound. The flowering of infinity into finitude is an implosion, rather than an explosion (like the vulgar Big Bang). The counter-play is then the emergence of infinite possibility from the finite nodes into which it has compressed itself. The way infinity unfolds, the way it explodes from the high compression of self-concealment, is unique and original for each node, each individual, each sentient creature from snail to star.
It is often argued that the Western worldview, by definition progressive and goal-oriented, is superior to the Eastern attitude which admits no change or, at the very most, admits cyclic variations of eternal patterns. In the West we are taught to think historically and heed the direction of time’s arrow. In the Eastern way, transhistorical vision prevails. Does evolution really advance? The answer from the view of the East would be, No, but it does diversify. What evolves is not linear, advancing from lower forms of life to higher ones. All forms of life, high and low, have the slow expulsion of primordial awareness working through them. The wonder consists in seeing how it manifests in each fractal display of the universal self-mirroring awareness.
To put the question once again, but modified, Does moral evolution really advance? The Western path of initiation exemplified in Parzival emphasizes the novelty of diversification and so the answer is, Yes, but not actually in the sense that humanity as a whole is learning to become better and better at being human. Rather, there are special occasions when humanity reveals areté, excellence, the best in itself. These depend on a sacred calling to which a particular individual, a man or woman, responds. These occasions are novel and original. They provide the subject-matter for the essential classics of Western spirituality.
Participation by Design
The Eastern classics, L1 – L10, are primarily documents of spiritual and metaphysical truth that came to be set down in literary form, while the Western classics are primarily great works of literature that happen to contain profound discoveries about the human situation. They are not products of a long lineage of spiritual masters who remain forever anonymous, but works of individual genius, outpourings of someone special. They can never be reduced to a universal content, for they remain originally stamped by the character and personal situation of their authors. Due to their status as expressions of novelty, the Western classics are imbued with high creative potency and they require, in turn, a creative response. Beyond the selfless absorption required for the Eastern classics, they demand deep personal identification, a commitment to long-term emotional empathy and intellectual intimacy, so that the dramatic power of the stories can be taken up into the actual unfolding of one’s own life story, to illuminate and amplify it in all its details. They involve us in thematic questions and they provoke systemic self-inquiry, exemplified in the method of Socrates (L12). The questions we must face in self-initiation are unique to the West as much in the way they are posed as in the way they are resolved: in short, style figures strongly in the realm of Western spirituality. The prevalent themes are romantic love, co-creation, personal choice, the nature of free will in relation to the acceptance of divine guidance, power over external nature, individuation, responsibility for creating personal reality, the discovery of biographical uniqueness, cultivation of the inner life, the imperative of beauty…. To incorporate these ever-evolving questions, the Western classics do not merely invite conversion by the persuasion of the eternal argument for Oneness, but they demand commitment to the singular, ever more diversified expressions of that Oneness. Yes, you are God, as the Eastern classics affirm — but God also evolves, changes, stylistically if not substantially. This experimental proposition, based on a dynamic rather than a static conception of God (E1.4), is the essence of the Western quest, sometimes called the way of individuation.
Criteria and Design
In the selection of the Western classics certain problems arise which do not apply to their Eastern counterparts. Since they are all great works of literature, the range of choices is far more vast and complex, and selection is more difficult. There are hundreds “great works” of Western literature which bear in some way or other on the spiritual plight of humanity — the anonymous Amor and Psyche of Greek antiquity, John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, or the complete works of Shakespeare, for that matter. The challenge here is to select those few exceptional works which illustrate the basic spiritual themes of the West in the most vivid, accessible way.
With this standard adopted, the path of selection is well-marked but the task is still not easy. The Satyricon of Petronius, for example, is a masterwork of Western literature with spiritual themes buried in it like rare minerals in crude ore. Dozens of other masterpieces of enduring value could be cited, but the following selections are all distinct in the way they highlight the main themes and questions of Western spirituality without the literary form obscuring the transcendental content. Granted, it takes personal exertion to get to that content and make it one’s own, unlike the Eastern classics where the content, the perennial message, is open and obvious — but then deep participation is the Western way.
Gender Issue
I lament the absence of works by women in this category. We must not conclude that men are more spiritual than women, although the tragic fact is, men have been historically more prominent in working out problems of spirituality through language and thought. Women, on the other hand, have cultivated the spiritual life of our species in a different manner, not always chronicled and commemorated within the patriarchal system that has prevailed in the West for millennia. Personally, I strongly oppose current versions of Meta-history (E17) which make patriarchal domination out to be a necessary evil that has led to exceptional results for humanity. The notion that patriarchy is like a “birth canal” through which a superior type of human individuality has been born in a long and bloody labour of 5,000 years is both grotesque and utterly wrong. To my mind, the very fact that men have dominated the chronicled record of spiritual-literary endeavours in the West is indicative of how twisted we are. Repression due to ignorance of woman and fear of her powers, not some kind of mysterious empowerment within the collective psyche, will explain this situation quite well, thank you.
The good news here is, while the selection of books 11 through 22 lack the authorship of women, woman is strongly represented in most of the classics on the list. Women may not have written any of these works, but the influence of the Feminine, in both its divine and human aspects, is writ large in these pages. The Goddess is evoked magnificently both in Gilgamesh and The Golden Ass, which contains a famous passage enumerating the many names of Isis-Sophia. In the medieval sagas of Parzival and Tristan, woman is centrally involved in the action, both the spiritual and carnal muse. Kundry, the sorceress in Parzival, is the prime Western example of a dakini, the faery woman who announces the sacred calling of the hero, and Helen in Faust is the ultimate muse, she who cannot be betrayed. From the sacred prostitute who initiates Eabani in Gilgamesh, to Repanse de Schoye, the Grail Maiden of the Wasteland, to Isolde, the consort of Tristan, to Ixbalanque, Jaguar Woman of the Popol Vuh, there is a vivid range of feminine personae in the essential reading of the West. Even in the works of Plato, known for his misogynist attitude, Socrates credits his initiation into the Mysteries of Eros to Diotima, a wise woman of the Peloponessus. Since she was a midwife, it is likely that Socrates derived from her his style of intellectual midwifery: hence the method of dialectic inquiry at the basis of the Western intellectual tradition was inspired by a woman. Last but not least, the Kalevala (L17) is typical of written versions of long oral recitations whose authorship is attributed to the volva, a clairvoyant woman shaman who gives oracular instruction. In Nordic myth the Goddess Freyr, acting as a tutelary dakini, taught Odin the runes, thus imparting the formal pattern of all later literary expressions. Mircea Eliade says that many shamanic traditions designate dakini-like women as their ancestral forebears. The power behind literature appears to be seidhr or seidhkona, oracular language learned from Goddess. (See Eliade, Shamanism, Ch. 11.) Seidhr in Old Norse is cognate with sidhe, the name for faery-women in Celtic mythology.
Europe and Westward
Finally, the Western masterworks confront us with the question of what is truly Western. Gilgamesh at the top of the list is a Middle Eastern epic, but the themes it exemplifies refer to the Occident rather than to Asia. Most of the other classics cited are European in origin. Europe is the West relative to Asia, but America is the West relative to Europe. Hence the selection ends with three works from America. The sequence is chronological, beginning around 1400 BCE with the Epic of Gilgamesh, then jumping to Greece in the Golden Age, the 4th century BCE, then through late antiquity and the Middle Ages up to the Renaissance, when the Hermetica were discovered by European intellectuals. From there the list shifts geographically to America and chronologically to the 19th Century.
The pattern may seem disjointed but it is not really so. I have given this nexus a great deal of thought. My logic assumes that Western aka European spirituality reaches a watershed with the appearance of the Hermetica around 1500. At the same historical moment, Europe spills Westward. The discovery of America is followed by an imperialist assault that brings Europeans into direct contact with the oral cultures of the Americas. Hence there is a hidden link between the date of the Hermetica and the Popul Vuh, because the sacred oral teachings recorded in the latter first began to be known to Europeans at the very time the Hermetic teachings were being circulated. The spiritual traditions of the New World (both the Americas) have been primarily oral, of course, but not exclusively so. Spanish priests destroyed vast amounts of Maya and Aztec codices, but some threads of the old tradition were gathered up and preserved. These eventually resulted in written versions of spiritual classics from the West aka America.
There is also an implicit link between the two works of Transcendentalism written by Emerson and Thoreau and the preceding list of Eastern classics. Only in the colonial period from about 1600 onward does America begin to have its own literary output, expressive of an emergent spiritual life distinct from the spirituality preserved in the oral folklore and ritual of the native Indian peoples, and then only in the middle of the 19th century does this develop into a spiritual outlook that is truly American in the modern sense. The Transcendentalist movement which defines this outlook was deeply influenced by the first translations of Eastern classics to reach America. At the same period, in the latter half of the 19th Century, various adventurers and scholars were rediscovering the sacred sites of Meso-American cultures. The three-way nexus is noteworthy as a remarkable instance of historical synchronicity. (These developments are described in more detail in Essay 2, parts 2 and 3, on the “Great Transmission.”)
Today, with the surge of interest in Native American spirituality (E20), it is useful to define the American classics (such as Emerson’s Essays) in their own right, distinct from the rapidly growing body of teachings and practices deriving from the native, or Amerindian, heritage. As for the folklore and native myths of the Americas, the Popol Vuh is given here as the exceptional instance of an oral tradition captured with rare force and real magic in the written word.
The Essential Spiritual Library: Western Spirituality, Books 11 – 22
11. The Epic of Gilgamesh, Sumerian legend found on clay tablets dating to 1500 BCE. Although it comes out of the fertile womb of the Middle East, this fantastic adventure contains in germinal form many of the key themes of the Western quest: loss of innocence leading to individuation, temptations of power, sexual initiation, the journey to the Underworld, the necessity of accepting death and separation, the yearning for eternal youth. It contrasts the role of hero, Enkidu, with that of champion, Gilgamesh, two male figures with very different relations to the Goddess (Ishtar in her Sumerian guise). An exciting adult fairy tale of vast mythic dimensions. [Many translations of relatively equal merit. The main text itself is short and broken in several places. Reading two or three translations in parallel is not extremely time-consuming, and increases enormously one’s appreciation for the grand emotions of the epic.]
12. Platonic Dialogues, Phaedrus and Symposium, written by the Greek abstract philosopher Plato in the 4th century BCE. Of all the Platonic dialogues, these two are the most accessible and entertaining. (They recount lively conversations exploring the themes of beauty, love, and divine inspiration mania in Greek). The Phaedrus is the sole non-urban dialogue, because it takes place outside Athens on the bank of the Illisos, a river that once meandered sharply from the foot of the Acropolis to the port of Piraeus. In this idyllic setting Socrates and his lanky friend, Phaedrus, discuss the dynamics of that daemonic force, Eros (usually translated as Love) as if it were a religious force, charged with “reverence and awe.” Clearly, this Love is not Platonic by the usual definition, but carnal and transcendent at once. The dialogue celebrates oral and oracular culture and includes a warning that writing things down will destroy our memories. It ends with a magnificent prayer to Pan, the goat-god, widely viewed in antiquity to have been Socrates in a former, archaic embodiment. The Symposium, by contrast, is set at a dinner party. Both dialogues are seminal to all later formulations of Western pathfinding. They initiate the centuries-long quest of the Western spirit to understand and experience the true nature of love, both human and divine. This is philosophy (literally, the “love of wisdom”) captured in its flowering moment, as good as it gets. The scent of wine is in the air, and you can almost feel the sages breathing garlic in your face.
13. Meditations of Marcus Aurelius (121 – 180 CE). These reflections gather into twelve books the quintessence of pagan ethics. From the first words, “courtesy and serenity,” Marcus makes an inventory of moral virtues he learned from others, through character influence rather than inculcation. Most scholars agree that his worldview is typical of Stoic philosophy in its finest hour. Originally entitled “To Himself,” the meditations were written in his late forties when Marcus, then Emperor, lived in a camp on the Danube with Roman legions guarding the empire against invasion. The humility and sobriety of his philosophy shines through every passage. How unbalanced is spiritual life in the West, where the teachings of Jesus are ubiquitous and these meditations practically unknown, yet three pages from the Meditations contain more moral edification than all the Gospels put together. Marcus does not preach or advise, he simply testifies to what he has learned: to “love truth,” for instance, and to trust that “the Mind of the universe is social.” He declares that the opportunity life offers is “to work out, in action and inaction alike, the purpose of our natural constitutions.” Stoic philosophy rejects the Christian paradigm of sin and assumes the essential goodness of human nature. The words of this pagan existentialist ring with common sense and his values resonate with the evidence of what might be called sanity of heart. It would be a grand social experiment to apply Marcus’s reflections to guide and nurture the moral development of youth. [Translation: Requires caution, because the accessibility of the Meditations can vary widely depending upon the language in which they are rendered. Style is crucial here, and some translations are simply too dense, too academically ponderous (A. S. L. Farquharson, for example). Marcus invites re-reading, so I would recommend taking time with him, consulting two or three translations, starting with Maxwell Staniforth in Penguin Classics.]
14. The Golden Ass, by Apuleius, written around 150 CE close to the time of Marcus Aurelius. Funny and even racy, this classic is a novelistic account of one man’s accidental initiation into the mysteries of Isis, at the expense of being changed into an ass. Hence, a comic treatment of a profound experience. Written in a period when the Mysteries were coming under attack due to the rise of Christianity, it shares the pagan outlook expressed in the Meditations. Apulieus provides good entertainment and a sobering reflection for modern seekers at risk of taking themselves too seriously and developing wild pretensions. Details of the initiation he undergoes are exact and authentic. [Translation: Try Robert Graves, a modern poet who wrote extensively on the Goddess.]
15. Parzival by Wolfram von Eschenbach, written around 1215. Here is a strong, sinewy rendering of the ultimate Western adventure, the quest for the Holy Grail, illustrating the paradigms of redemption and service. Parzival is the supreme exemplar of what we now call individuation, although he is also more than that. The story is full of romance and mystery, populated with characters both salty and supernatural. There is a twisty plot with terrific special effects. In fact, there is so much in Parzival for sheer literary entertainment that we may fail to realize the deeper grain of the tale. The challenge here is to come forearmed with knowledge of the quest and some background on the pre-Christian symbolism of the Grail. (In this context I would recommend, the long section on Parzival in Creative Mythology by Joseph Campbell, and for a deeper plunge, The Grail Legend by Emma Jung, wife of C. G. Jung, and Marie-Louise von Franz.) In the preface to Western Spirituality I noted how women figure strongly in this classic. Parzival’s mother, Herzeleide (“Heartache”), his wife Condwiramurs (“Fetching Manners”), and his initiatrice, Kundry (Kundalini Woman), “La Surziere,” are all vividly portrayed. Likewise for the male side of the family saga. Of special importance is Amfortas (Enfermetez, ”sick or wasting”), the wounded Fisher King, who represents the wounded power of patriarchy which harms true manhood as much as it represses womanhood. After asking Amfortas, his maternal uncle, the Grail Question, “What ails thee, Uncle?,” Parzival then turns to the Grail itself and asks, “How can I serve thee?” Instead of being served by the Grail, he determines to serve it. In this single gesture, Parzival shifts the “karma” of redemption in the West. [Translation: A. T. Hatto in Penguin Classics. Both the foreword and the second introduction at the end are extremely helpful.]
16. Tristan and Isolde by Gottfried von Strassburg, written around 1210. The greatest love story of the West, which demands to be read with deep empathy to appreciate its psychological depth. It sets out in clear dramatic enactments the psychology of romantic love, seven hundred years before psychology was invented. The “tragic ending” when Tristan and Isolde fuse in the consummate orgasm of the liebestod (love-death) is neither tragic nor an ending. The love-death is merely a supple springboard into the transcendent dimension of carnality where sexual and spiritual elements are merged in one ripe stew. The story goes on, the lessons it can teach us today as relevant as they were in medieval times, or perhaps even more so, considering that the modern taboo on Erotic attraction may be stronger now than it was then. Gottfried was extremely daring for his time. He applies the liturgical idiom of bread and wine to the passion of the lovers, thus asserting that their romantic bond replaces the holy sacrament. Not surprisingly, he disappeared when the Inquisition came to town, and his poem has to be supplemented by another troubadour, Thomas of Britain. Tristan & Isolde is essential background to all modern approaches to romantic love, e.g., Joseph Campbell in Creative Mythology, Robert A. Johnson in He, She, and We, and Denis de Rougemont (L38), to name but a few. Swem nie von liebe leit geshach / Dem geshach ouch liep von liebe nie. “Who never had the sorrow of love never had the joy of it either.” [Translation: again by A. T. Hatto in Penguin Classics. The rendering is strong, clear and psychologically cogent all the way through. What you can read between the lines in T & I is staggering.]
17. The Kalevala, epic poem of Finland, rare example of the timeless oral tradition of shamanic bards who sang their deeds in runes, complex lines of carefully rhymed and metered poetry. A masterpiece of mantric recitation, this long verse saga recounts the adventures of three magicians linked to the mysterious Sampo, Heaven’s Mill. The main characters, a poet-sorcerer, a smith and a warrior, comprise the sublime trinity of Asiatic shamanism. The poem opens with a vision of the cosmic ocean, womb of the World Mother, Ilmatar, the virgin who gives birth to the first sorcerer. Kaleva in Lapland appears to be an Arctic version of Shambala. (It is certainly curious that the sacred center of Tibet is called the Potala, while Pohjola is the Finnish name for the magic northern land of the heroes.) The poem contains a description of the shaman’s magical flight to the realm of the northern stars. Louhi, the ferocious hag who guards the Sampo, is typical of dakinis who impose psycho-physical ordeals to transmit initiatory teachings. A feast for the auditory imagination.
NOTE: Although the extant version of the Kalevala dates from 1822-49, when a Finnish scholar collected the runes (hot and steaming) from then-living singers, the poem belongs to the epoch of the Icelandic Eddas compiled by Snorri Sturluson in the 13th Century; hence I have placed it provisionally in the chronological niche with Tristan and Parzival. In his attempt at a national epic called Hiawatha, American poet H. W. Longfellow borrowed the haunting eight-syllable trochaic line of the Finnish bards. Example from the Kalevala: “Then the smith his steps arrested / In amazement at the pine-tree, / With the Great Bear in the branches, / And the moon upon its summit.” [Translation: Accept only those versions which preserve the poetic meter.]
18. Faust, Parts One and Two, by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832). The story of a quest for power and immortality in defiance of the Christian God, ending in ultimate redemption by passage into the Underworld, the realm of the Mothers. In parallel to Parzival’s adventure, Faust exemplifies the Western struggle to reconcile spiritual power (Grail) with human weakness (Amfortas, patriarchy), but in Goethe’s upscaled quest the power comes from alliance with something diabolic and the weakness that brings down the protagonist is largely intellectual. Faust may be taken for an allegory that looks ahead to the fate of Western science, currently being acted out on the planetary scale. The alchemist who seeks ultimate control over nature is already perverted by power-lust, because alchemy proposed co-creation, not domination, of the natural world (see E3). Faust is a technocrat and the belief in technological magic overrides his dedication to the Earth Spirit (which appears to him in a vision in the opening scene.) As Goethe has penned it, this is poetic drama full of rough-and-ready humor, scathing irony and startling insights into the parallel worlds of occultism and depth psychology. [Translation: Two are a must-read, the now classical version of Bayard Taylor and the more recent rendering by Philip Wayne in Penguin Classics.]
§ In 2020 coincident with the covid hoax, I had occasion to delve deeply into Faust, reading five translations and listening to the German in a three-hour theatrical rendering which I watched with fascination. I also read a couple of biographies of Goethe, including the first two volumes of the three-volume opus by Robert Boyle, 600 pages to a volume. Two factors profoundly impacted the view of Goethe I had held up to that time. He is the consummate exemplar of German genius, someone you are expected to admire. And Faust is supposed to be taken as a morality tale for Western culture. I had assumed both expectations…. But hold on there, big dog.
During this intense period of investigation, my opinion of the figure of Faust and his creator went through a overhaul and came out several notches down the pole of respect. First off, I see in Faust the model of a psychopath. The narrative clearly describes him as a pedophile fixed on the transhumanist ideal of eternal youthfulness, a man who betrays the young girl he seduces and leaves her in prison, eventually to be beheaded for the infanticide of his child. Not a pretty story. So much for Part One. Part Two is no better as it appears to be an attempt to show how Faust redeems himself for his deplorable behavior. Here the object of his desire is Helen, some kind of reflection of feminine purity and divinity in human guise. Nothing in the second part of the Faust narrative is convincing to me. It reeks of what Sartre called “bad faith.” That is, the trick of giving yourself bad reasons to legitimate and “redeem” what you decided to do due to other reasons.
Add to this revaluation the insights I was able to draw from the dense biographies I read, especially Boyle. Plowing through minute and elaborate details of every aspect of Goethe’s life, I came away with an unpleasant feeling, the sense of encountering someone unsavory – at best, a disingenuous narcissist and social climber. I came away with a distinct dislike for the person. Goethe had serious soul problems of a religious nature, and he also had a problem with the perception of nature itself, due to the influence of Spinoza. But that is another story.
My conclusion after 30 years: Faust belongs in this list due to its reputation, but it is not to be taken as an advisory tale with the figure of Faust elevated to some kind of positive archetype of Western Man.
19. The Hermetica. A collection of metaphysical teachings on God, the cosmos and human intelligence, attributed to Hermes Trismegistos, “Thrice-Greatest Hermes,” a title of the initiated master in the Egyptian Mystery Schools. Though more Asian than Western in content, these discourses are the first truly esoteric writings to be made accessible in the West, thus opening the way for independent spiritual seeking in our European culture. (On this option, see ahead, Essay 2.) Here is the most venerable wisdom of antiquity, hot off the papyrus. For the most part it is strange, heady stuff that looks relatively harmless, though it served to disclose to the uninitiated the long-concealed secret of the Mysteries, deification. A controversial idea, if there ever was one. These eighteen treatises make for difficult reading. They are the least accessible of any works in the Essential Library, yet encountering them is an essential test for every self-respecting pathfinder today. Along with the Nag Hammadi materials (E14 on Gnosticism) they are a rare touchstone to the lost knowledge of the Mystery Schools. One of the treatises, Asclepius III, notes the advance of Christianity with horror and dismay and laments the loss of Pagan wisdom. Needless to say, we are hardly aware today of what’s missing. A plunge into The Hermetica might refresh our memories, if anything can. [Translation: The 1924 version of Walter Scott, published by Shambhala in 1985 with three volumes of commentary, was preceded in 1906 by theosophical scholar G. R. S. Mead, available as Thrice-Greatest Hermes from Samuel Weiser. More recently, Brain P. Copenhaver has done a translation with a distinctive modern flair, available from Cambridge University Press.]
*****
This selection covers the Western tradition from Plato to the Renaissance, when there occurred a surge of interest in ancient wisdom and occult systems, a kind of metaphysical revival such as we’re seeing since the Sixties. After this period comes the jump explained in the preface. From the time of the discovery of the New World to the American Revolution is about three hundred years. Between 1492 and 1776 some great philosophical works were written, but these are of little interest or practical value to the modern seeker because (with very few exceptions) they concern meaning rather than awareness. Following the American and French revolutions, however, the massive movement of Romanticism took shape and set in motion many of the main currents that were later to be defined in the modern spiritual movement. (On this crucial transition process, see the long Essays, E1 and E2, and E22 on Romanticism.) In America the Romantic movement appeared in New England Transcendentalism, which produced two great classics of Western spirituality:
20. Essays, written between 1836 and 1864, by Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882). Eloquent expressions of a deep and practical thinker, a metaphysical pragmatist, one could say. Emerson reflects on the philosophy of individualism, reverence for nature, self-reliance, moral responsibility, destiny, and purpose. These essays touch upon the essential themes of the Western way and provide a touchstone for ever-fresh reflections on the larger implications of the supreme idol of the West, freedom. Anyone convinced of the superiority of Asian wisdom (as I myself tend to have been in some ways) will find here a welcome counterbalance. Emerson can be a little preachy at moments, but he is never superficial. Indeed, he shows us that nothing can be superficial when the powers of genuine self-observation are brought to bear. There is plenty of old-fashioned advice here, with a strong emphasis on learning from life how to unfold the innate (cf. the Isis-Sophia principle in the Introduction). The philosophy of rugged individualism at its taproots. “The magnetism which all original action exerts is explained when we inquire the reason of self-trust. Who is the Trustee?” (In “Self-Reliance,” 1841.)
21. Walden (1854), by Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862). The journal of a retreat, written long before such retreats became fashionable. It must be said that Thoreau was rather a misanthrope, but he gives it a good name. Having observed that the “mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation,” he withdrew for two years to a small cabin on Walden Pond near Concord, Massachusetts, to be close to nature and commune with his soul. The result was this famous journal, full of simple and deep reflections, a touchstone to the American mind. Walden communicates as much through tone and mood as through content. There is nothing revelatory here, but Thoreau’s intimacy with the incidental current of life exemplifies reception to all manner of revelations. He leans into the current of the ages like an old oak hunkered over a river bank. Essential reading in Western spirituality concludes with one work from the Amerindian heritage that provides access to the vast and deep cosmology of the Native American cultures:
22. The Popol Vuh, the creation myth of the ancient Maya, one of the few authentic documents that survives from the vast oral tradition of native America. The “Book of the People” is a long, winding tale of magical adventures in the natural world and daring exploits in the Underworld. This is a massive bedtime story for adults, really strange and really scary. Like the Kalevala, its oral value has to be savoured in the mind: “Here we shall take up the demonstration, revelation, and account of how things were put in shadow and brought to light.”
By the Maker, Modeler, named Bearer, Begetter,
Hunahpu Possum, Hunaphu Coyote,
Great White Peccary, Tapir,
Sovereign Plumed Serpent,
Heart of the Lake, Heart of the Sea,
Maker of the Blue-Green Plate,
Maker of the Blue-Green Bowl….”
Significantly, and at last, the creation tale begins with reverent invocation of Animal Powers. Like all indigenous wisdom, the Popol Vuh celebrates the inter-species bond and asserts the dependence of homo sapiens upon the community of fellow creatures in the mineral, plant and animal worlds. Western Europe colonized the American West and the entire New World and, in doing so, perpetrated wholesale genocide on the natives, but something remains. By a huge twist of historic fate, after it has turned the native paradise into a Wasteland, something in the Western spirit longs for what it has destroyed. Western spirituality, technically initiated into its modern phase by Parzival, now becomes implicated in the task of serving the Grail of Nature and safeguarding the decimated legacy of indigenous traditions. In contemporary life, the sacred calling that comes to some individuals draws them irresistibly to the First Peoples. With all the stealth of a jaguar roaming the labyrinth, native imagination returns and enters the modern psyche on the sly. To invite and cultivate it is a task for the future, a challenge that may determine what we like to call “spirituality” for a long time to come. The Popol Vuh is one point of entry into this emergent path. [Translation: In this case we are fortunate to have the version of anthropologist Dennis Tedlock who draws from oral sources among the Quiche Maya of Yucatan. Published in 1985, it represents one of several landmark books of the mid-eighties that recover indigenous wisdom in a vital imaginative idiom. This translation captures the mysterious dimension of the oral-oracular genius, comparable to L17, the Kalevala.]