The passing of my wife in November of 2021 blasted me into an alchemical transmogrification; a metamorphic recomposition of my most personal of worlds. To both celebrate the cathartic event and commemorate our holy, 16-year-long marriage, I designed a tattoo that artist Brad Huntington etched onto my right arm on December 23rd, 2021. It took a little over four hours. It's my only tattoo.
The glyph represents what Olga, my wife, awakened in me—a refined oreintation to be courageous and live the life of my imagination; to not don personae, commensurate only with social mores; to be a more authentic Emil. What her passing jostled was my willingness to more openly continue the pursuit of the holy—if only, to better know where she roams and to more clearly remember (communicate with?) her.
This submission is a didactic of the glyph (i.e., an explanation of its various elements).
The Guts of the Glyph
Over a three-decade period, several leitmotifs, or recurrent themes, came to my mind. I consider them markers along the road to a broader and more naked personage. Some of them are well defined. Some, not so much. Some are still fuzzy but forming. I don't know what else to call them, so I'm going with musical terminology—leitmotifs. By conveying my menagerie of lived experiences, I hope to illustrate a semblance of meaning that is the symbology of the glyph.
Leitmotif 1
As you may know from my post about how I was named, most of my early childhood was devoid of formalized religion. My mother was Christian, and my father, Baháʼí. But neither my brother nor I knew what those affiliations meant. It wasn't until I was presented with a graphic novel of the Old Testament in 1979 by a Jehovah's Witness who came to the backhouse of my uncle's home (where we lived) that I took an interest, on my own, in learning about this thunder god that was able to do amazing things (as well as commit holocausts for very little to no reason at all). My mom and her whole side of the family were all about it! Christians, of the Eastern Orthodox tradition—UNITE!
When I was ten years old, I developed an interest in my father's side of the story—the Baháʼí Faith.
Through my early teen years, I learned everything I could about the two traditions and, in many respects, was both a Baháʼí and a Christian, simultaneously. Because that's the logical way, it seems to need to happen, right? If your parents are of two faiths, you learn 'em both.
But the more I learned, the more my critically trained mind was smelling a rat….
I think it was when I was about 12 or 13 years old that I started to wiggle my way out of going to the local Apostolic Armenian Church and about 14 or 15 when I was allowed to skip going to the local Baháʼí Community Center communions. It wasn't because I had any problems with either of the mythologies. It was their insistence on one god and the absolute allegiance to it that I found suspicious. It struck me as the basis of an enslavement strategy. I mean, of the 10 commandments of this deity to its worshippers, like honor your parents, don't kill, don't commit adultery, don't steal, don't lie, etc., the FIRST THREE commandments are all about the deity's insistence on itself as the end-all-be-all—LITERALLY, the Alpha and Omega. It was almost as if the commandments were more about the fidelity of commitment to a somewhat petulant, bratty, sky god than for the betterment of the Israelite tribes.
אני ה' אלוהיך, לא יהיו לך אלים לפני.“I am the Lord thy God, thou shalt not have any gods before Me.”
לא תשא את שם ה' אלוהיך לשוא. “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.”
זכרו לקדש את יום השבת. “Remember to keep holy the Sabbath day.”
Me me me. I'm the boss. Don't forget.
So naturally, I took on an intensive interest in comparing religions, which required learning more about them. I wondered, if there was something amuck in the most popular of world religions. Were the other faiths in the same, smelly, leaking boat?
Leitmotif 2
A recurring dream I experienced through much of the late 80s centered on some telling of how the human species was an antenna (via the metal in our bones) that tunes signals being sourced from some other intelligent beings in the universe (or extra-universe) at ultra-low frequencies. And what, pray tell, was this signal? I conceived of it as a catalyst causing the evolution of all kingdoms of life. Silly, I know. But fun and imaginative, I suppose.
Well, as it turned out, in 2006, for the first time, a powerful flash of radio waves, known as Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs), was discovered. Because they came from so far away, there was never enough evidence to determine what exactly was making them. Since then, we've detected other FRBs and have been able to track them back to their host galaxies, but their source has never been pinpointed.
Leitmotif 3
Like MANY children, I was drawn to the conception of dragons, those most fascinating of mythical creatures: so much so that I fancied myself as Dragonborn—half-human, half dragon! And wouldn't you know it, it became a friggin' character race in the later iteration of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, a table-top role-playing game my friends and neighbors would gather to "play"!
Leitmotif 4
Since I was a teenager in Glendale, California, I've had a penchant for teaching. I took on the role for the first time at 14 years old. I was a boy scout. The elders of the local boy scout troops tasked me with preparing and teaching lessons to the boy scout group I was part of on the history of boy scouting (e.g., who Lord Robert Baden Powell was). Mind you, I don't know why. Why did they want me, one of the troop members, to teach my peers about that stuff? It's not as if I knew the content any better than they did? And, the elders ALWAYS taught the lessons.
I enjoyed doing it. My sense was that the kids were impressed by my command of the Armenian language and that I just got up and explained the history to them—in Armenian. I remember going over topics such as scouting being for boys between 11-15, how it took formal shape in Great Britain when, in 1908, Baden-Powell published Scouting for Boys, etc.
Of course, as you may know, dear reader, I ended up becoming a professional public school teacher, followed by a now 16-year career in administration, about a decade as a college professor, etc. Yes, as were my grandfather and grandmother; I was both a pedagogue and an androgogue.
Leitmotif 5
My interest in languages isn't abnormal. My mother tongue is Armenian. My father-tongue is Farsi (Persian/Iranian). As such, I was bilingual right from the start. Then, America brought English to me, too. Even though I was trilingual by the age of ten, I don't recall ever being proud of that in my youth. It was just how the world was processed for me—through three concurrently aligned lenses of language.
Էմիլ Ահանգարզադե (my name in Armenian)
امیل آهنگرزاده (my name in Farsi)
01100001 01100010 01100011 (my name in binary code)
But I didn't stop there. I picked up other languages, too, like the language of music, HTML and CSS (website development), and multiple specialized, professional field-based languages (e.g., enterprise network architecture, cybersecurity, stagecraft, etc.). And, as it turned out, my proclivity for language was something that ran in our family. My father is also a polyglot. He picks up languages like nothin'—Arabic, Turkish, Armenian, and English.
Leitmotif 6
The first stories I remember reading and hearing were the stories of an Armenian author—Hovhannes Tumanyan. He was the national poet of Armenia. Most specifically, his poem A Drop of Honey (1909) is one that I've held dear for nearly fifty years now. It's a story that encourages responsible leadership and the need to take the initiative in nipping problems before they escalate out of control.
I recall thinking that the story wasn't just about leadership. It was also about human nature: we're indolent, reckless, thoughtless, reactionary, etc. Hearing and then reading the story was when I first latched onto storytelling as the most powerful way to make the world a better place.
Along with literati such as Edward Albee, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Anton Chekhov, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Bertolt Brecht, David Mamet, Neil Simon, John Guare, Aaron Sorkin, Frank Herbert, Philip K. Dick, Oliver Stone, Arthur C. Clarke, and Parviz Sayyad, Tumanyan was probably the first author in my life that got me thinking how magical and mystical storytelling and its conduit, language, could be.
Leitmotif 7
I worked as a professional lighting designer and sound engineer for various playhouses, convention centers, and musical arenas for about six years. I started apprenticing theatrical light designers during my first two years in high school. Then, toward the end of my sophomore year, I got hired to design my first professional show for the City of Glendale! I was 16! I built a pretty nifty little portfolio of designs over those years.
I then graduated to designing lighting for various playhouses and productions. There was just something about painting with light and sound that I found satisfying. Of course, working with that technology depended on my understanding of the forces at play (e.g., translucence, hues, soundwaves, acoustics, radiant energy, optics, etc.), making the work even MORE fascinating. Perhaps during this phase of my life, I began to get curious about what now, I refer to as the divine forces of light and sound and the potentially transcendental technology that they may someday offer us.
Leitmotif 8
I'd come to understand what physics was from my seventh-grade science teacher, Mr. Palmer. I mean magnets, fields, photons, redshifting, the Doppler effect, supernovae, quarks, etc. I remember thinking, "THAT'S what magic REALLY is!"
Mr. Palmer was adamant about us all understanding that Physics was ONLY offered to high school seniors and only to the best of the students. So I set a goal. Of course, I enjoyed my Science classes through my first and second years, but I was more interested in my girlfriend, and as such, science took a back seat there for a while. I was on track, though.
But then came my junior year. My Chemistry class teacher was not impressed one bit by me. He wasn't rude or anything. But I recall trying to speak with him about my grade on an assignment and him just brushing me off. We got on, just not in the way most of my teachers and I did. He ended up giving me a C.
I needed at least a B to get into Physics.
So I spoke with my counselor and was told that the Physics class teacher could add me if he chose. And that's all I needed to hear. Next thing you know, I'm in the Physics class Mr. Palmer had told me about all those years back.
As such, over the ensuing decades, disciplines and areas of study such as Physics, Chemistry, Psychology, and other fields such as Psychiatry, Ethnobotany, formalized logic, and technology became my jam.
Leitmotif 9
I had a lively relationship with two childhood friends—Pollette and Khashi. They lived down the street from the apartment where my family lived in Tehran. They were siblings. Also, they were imaginary.
I don't even recall really thinking of them as people. They were just Pollette and Khashi to me. They were these two…I want to say…entities that were quite obviously childlike, but not in any specific manner that I could describe, who REALLY enjoyed playing with me. I recall them being so happy to see me each time my mother would take me out for a walk. My baby brother was just born, so mom and some of her friends would stroll him along while we went for afternoon walks altogether. The walks would nearly ALWAYS go by my friends' home, so I could say hello, hang out a bit, reconnect, tell them about the crazy adventure I just had with my mom and brother, etc.
The most fascinating thing I recall about my imaginary friends is that they seemed to want me to talk…a lot. They would get elated each time I'd say something. They would "smile" and rejoice because I told them my brother was crying a lot earlier. And when I wouldn't have anything to say to them, they would just nudge me on to start repeating things. They weren't annoying or anything. In fact, I recall a sense of contentedness each time I would speak and see them satisfied.
As mentioned, my mother would bring her friends along for those walks—but not just to keep her company. They would sit by a tree right outside the house of my imaginary friends and watch me hanging out with them intently. In fact, I recall the sensation of being confused about who I wanted to satisfy more—my mother and her friends, or Pollette and Khashi. The three of us would sometimes sing together too. Of course, to my mom, I was just singing aloud. But, in my mind, I was trying to figure out what I was supposed to sing or say next, based on what Pollette and Khashi were singing. Again, not very specific memories, but I recall trying to intonate or interplay with what I was hearing them singing.
When we came to America, I lost contact with my friends. For the longest time…
Leitmotif 10
Creating and exploring were my two drivers as a young man. As such, I found myself interested in playwriting, directing, and, of course, acting. I was a child actor in the Persian diaspora in America. I even had my own segment on a weekly TV show —all in Farsi. In junior high school, I was the evil boxing champion in our annual pantomime assemblies, Uncle Barnaby in Babes in Toyland; shoot—I even played Al Delvecchio in a musical version of Happy Days (as in Sunday Monday). The backstory on Al was that he once had a true love in his youth. Cindy. So, right smack in the middle of the play, I busted out singing Cindy Oh Cindy by Eddie Fisher (1956, cause of, you know, Happy Days). Here it is for your listening pleasure…
From thence began my pursuit of mastering the craft of play. Not really to become a pro ("Sure, that's what they all say"). But, I guess, yeah—I'm saying it. To me, the dramatic arts were a technology. And I was going to figure out what the framework or the innards of this technology were. Because I was getting results! I remember how my reputation SPIKED in 7th grade because of the whole-school assemblies I was in.
By the time I was transitioning to college, I'd had my fill of being on stage (even though I continued professionally in the field through and into my late twenties). I wanted to be the creator himself. The playwright! The Songwriter! So that's what I did. I wrote two plays in my early college days—Just a Second and Geopetto's Dream.
I was hooked! The ability to simulate realities!! With real people!!! THAT'S the ultimate psychedelic. I don't need the drugs, thank you (wink).
I studied theater, film, and television arts in graduate school at UCLA. I even taught a few of the more challenging sophomore acting classes…
Leitmotif 11
Sometime in the summer of 1992, my oldest friend, Ara, who was a few years into studying Philosophy at the University of Southern California, told me during a discussion regarding evolutionary processes that one of his professors had mentioned, during a lecture, what sounded to him like an engaging text. Ara couldn't recall the book's name but did manage to remember the author. Terence McKenna.
The book was Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge; A Radical History of Plants, Drugs, and Human Evolution. Yes, that's basically three titles in one (my kind of guy). This text led me to study ethnobotany and ethnopharmacology, with a specific emphasis on paths toward psychological healing and even perhaps transcendence. I devoured it in one sitting. Then, re-read it on the weekend.
Amongst its many fascinating perspectives, McKenna proposed that the transformation from humans' early ancestors known as Homo erectus to the species known as Homo sapiens was because, at approximately 100,00 BCE, Homo erectus discovered and introduced Psilocybe cubensis to its diet. The theory was based on the work of Roland Fischer, a Hungarian psychopharmacologist, and the German chemist Kurt Beringer—both of whom dedicated much of their research looking for an explanatory model of psychosis for schizophrenia by comparing it to altered states produced by neuropsychedelic chemicals (circa the 1940s).
McKenna's radical, though somewhat incomplete, proposition for what may be going on led me to study the works of Alan Watts. He, in turn, led me to Rupert Sheldrake, Ralph Abrahams, Aldous Huxley, Robert Anton Wilson, Albert Hofmann, and of course, to the master himself, Carl Gustav Jung. It was an esoteric education of a lifetime.
Leitmotif 12
Again, since the early 1990s, I've held interests in the proof of reductio ad impossible—opposition (or, more accurately, polarity). While an undergraduate student at Cal State LA, I learned a logical principle referred to as contraposition, wherein the opposite of a logical concept can be assumed to determine the tautology of the logical proposition. This engendered a life-long tendency to think about the polarity of a given creative matter. Even information and ideas have poles; their destruction is coded in their existence. Opposites are identical in nature but different in degree. So I found endless creative expressions by being hyper-aware of the principle of polarity.
In logic and mathematics, contraposition refers to the inference of going from a conditional statement into its logically equivalent contrapositive and an associated proof method known as proof by contraposition. The contrapositive of an idea has its antecedent and consequent inverted and flipped.
The principle of polarity explains that seemingly opposite things are actually one and the same at varying degrees. A simple example of this is hot and cold. Cold is just the absence of heat, and they're both one thing: temperature. Love and hate are two ways of experiencing the same thing, a relationship toward something. This is the foundation of alchemy, or the ability to "transmute" your experiences at will..
Leitmotif 13
Fundamental physics tells us that everything in the universe is in motion because forces exist in the universe. The gravitational and electromagnetic forces ensure large objects are in motion, while the weak and strong nuclear forces ensure the quantum world is constantly in motion. If there were no forces, there would be no motion.
A classic example of this is a frequency in which the seven octaves of music, tuned up 44 octaves, miraculously becomes the spectrum of visible light (passing through states of being the buzz pitch of insects, ultra-sound, plasma, ether, hyper sound, and even octaves of heat.) While they change manifestation, the vibrations maintain the exact correspondence, the difference being only in measurement and energy as frequencies slide up the electromagnetic spectrum.
At the highest rates of vibration, the speed and intensity are so rapid it appears to be motionless, like a spinning wheel appearing stable. And at the lowest levels of vibration, objects move so slowly they seem to be totally at rest. Between these two exist infinite manifestations, all occurring at varying octaves of vibration, each with its own phenomena.
Knowing this, Hermeticists believe that even thoughts have their own rate of vibration and can be controlled like tuning an instrument to produce different results for the aim of self and environment mastery. As our understanding of vibration, frequency, harmony, and resonance increase, so too may our power over ourselves and our worlds.
Leitmotif 14
During those heady days of the early 90s, I became fascinated with the Rigveda, the ancient Indian collection of Vedic Sanskrit hymns. One of those hymns, the Hymn of Creation, read…
“In the beginning, there was neither existence nor non-existence. All this world was unmanifest energy… The One breathed, without breath, by Its own power Nothing else was there…”
Since coming across this contemplative idea, the principle of mentalism was something that I swore by. The all is mind. The universe is mental. It's a mental projection. Simultaneously, my interest in psychology grew while an undergraduate. I took on a deep study of mythology and the philosophy of mind (a.k.a. "consciousness studies," which wasn't a thing yet because it entailed the need for a majority of researchers in multiple fields, such as physics, mathematics, neuroscience, linguistics, anthropology, etc., to come to terms with the presumably unfalsifiable concept, altogether).
Leitmotif 15
As a teenager, I developed an interest in exploring and seeking hidden treasures in the name of justice or to bring light to falsehoods. Oliver Stone's JFK, Steven Spielberg's Goonies, the first + third Indiana Jones movies, Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and most significantly, the television series In Search Of… set my mind into a groove of noetic archeological interests that knew very few bounds.
In fact, I even wrote a historical fiction tale of treasure hunts of my own; perhaps, a subconscious homage to the stories that sparked my inserts as a child. The Secret at Mahone Bay. It's doing meh in India and the Arab Emirates ;^0). It's a telling of the life and most dramatic times of one William Kidd, an actual 17th-century privateer turned pirate, intermixed with a modern story of related stolen family documents and the adventurous search to reclaim them.
Leitmotif 16
Into the late 1990s, I intensively studied various theatrical traditions from across the western canon, including Greek theater, Roman theater, Medieval theater, Renaissance and Restoration-era theater, and so on. In fact, the University of California, Los Angeles conferred a Master of Fine Arts degree to me in two thousandth year of our Lord.
During that period, I specialized in two traditions—the study and production of the plays of William Shakespeare and Commedia dell'Arte, the Medieval Italian tradition of improvisational street comedy using a series of well-known stock characters: characters such as the Zanni (clowns) or the Vecchi (villains), or the Innamorati (lovers).
My donned character (think Harry Potter Sorting Hats) was the doctor, better known as Il Dottore. When I played him, I used different names, like Graziano Baloardo and Spaccastrummolo, roughly translated in English, respectively, as Dr. Gratian Stoupide and Dr. Hack-and-Bandage. The character first appears during the sixteenth century. The back story is that his dear wife was lost at sea and that he has spent his whole life raising his only and most desirable daughter, all the while learning everything (without understanding anything).
The Doctor is one of the Vecchi and is prone to sin (and comedy, and lechery, and thievery, and charm, etc). He has an unusual mask covering only the nose and forehead, either black or flesh-tone, and dresses in black. Early doctors wore caricatures of the medical robes of their era. Still, in the mid-seventeenth century, the costume was modified to a jacket of Louis XIV style, extremely wide hat, breeches, and a ruff collar.
Il Dottore is rarely shown as being even remotely competent in his profession, and familiar sources of humor stem from his low cure rates and the bizarre (and obviously useless) treatments he administers. A modern version of this character can be found in the form of Professor Farnsworth on Futurama — an extremely elderly, amoral, senile, and deranged scientist who appears to spend most of his time inventing useless and ridiculous devices and ordering around his employees.
Of course, there are many other nuances, such as his ability to use potions and magical incantations to amaze and dazzle, his prolific riding of a bicycle around the town and the university, and his highly protective position on his daughter, whom he will only allow marrying a man whose family can provide the type of dowry she (and her poor, long-departed mother) deserve, and, for those who REALLY know my work history, tends to be used as the pre-warm act that gathers crowds and the general host/narrator of the plays and presentations. But that's for another write-up…
Leitmotif 17
It wasn't until a little less than a decade ago that I developed a clearer understanding of my long-time fascination with secret worlds inside of mountains or beneath us, underground. My earliest recollection of the impulse was while I was on a bus ride out to Rancho Alegre, a science-centered campground nestled in the San Marcos pass of California's Los Padres National Forest. The kid next to me, I think his name was Sevak, was going on about something called "the Pittsburg stealers" (which I was a little weirded out by because he seemed to be talking about a gang of thugs that are constantly stealing things—I didn't know!). As I stared out the window, I was viewing a mid-sized mountain range and recall thinking that people may someday have to live inside of the mountains, just to protect themselves from a heating sun.
That's when I was a tween, all of ten or eleven years old. But the conception lingered throughout my life; a fascination with creating a domicile, a large underground city, or even a school or church. Thinking back, it was probably because we were all being made aware of and taught about what we nowadays refer to as "climate change."
Leitmotif 18
There weren't many novelists that I was a devotee to. Frank Herbert was one. H.G. Wells was another. Edgar Allan Poe, Hovhannes Tumanyan, Isaac Asimov, Carl Sagan, Arthur C. Clarke, Douglas Adams, Rod Serling, Graham Hancock, Woody Allen, Aaron Sorkin, Michael Crichton as well as Alexander Dumas were, still, others yet. Not a big Ray Bradbury or Stephen King fan; I just wasn't into their plots. No shade, though.
But there was a stand-out. Philip K. Dick.
I haven't read all of his works, but here's what I HAVE read (and, sometimes, re-read) in the order that I came across them:
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (1968)1
A Scanner Darkly (1977)2
Valis (1981)3
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1964)
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said (1974)
The Divine Invasion (1981)
The Transmigration of Timothy Archer (1982)
We Can Remember for You Wholesale (1966)4
The Simulacra (1964)5
Now Wait for Last Year (1966)6
Minority Report (1956)7
Paycheck (1953)8
The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick (2011)9
I'll probably never read all of his stuff. But what remains on my bucket list are:
The Man in the High Castle (1962)10
Radio Free Albemuth (1985)
Deus Irae (1976)
The Ganymede Takeover (1967)
I learned of Philip K. Dick via the movie Blade Runner at first. But, sometime during one of my lower-division undergraduate philosophy classes at Cal State Los Angeles, I was introduced to Jean Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation. We were learning about semiotic studies—the process of how anything communicates something (meaning) to an interpreter. The professor mentioned this French book which (at the time) was written about a decade back by a cultural theorist, Jean Baudrillard. After hearing the lecture on the man's work, I picked up the book. But, admittedly, really couldn't get through the entire thing. I think it may've been the translation, or perhaps Baudrillard just wasn't my type of writer. But the discussion of symbology and its relation to evidence of contemporaneous existences was mind-blowing.
Baudrillard claims that our current society has replaced all reality and meaning with symbols and signs and that human experience is a simulation of reality. These simulacra are not merely mediations of truth or even deceptive mediations of reality; they are not based in fact, nor do they hide reality. They simply hide that nothing like reality is relevant to our current understanding of our lives.
The simulacra that Baudrillard refers to are the significations and symbolism of culture and media that construct perceived reality, the acquired understanding by which our lives and shared existence are rendered legible. Baudrillard believed that society had become so saturated with these simulacra and our lives so saturated with the constructs of society that all meaning was becoming meaningless by being infinitely mutable; he called this phenomenon the "precession of simulacra."
So like Dick’s stories, my life has been replete with an exploration of the conception of reality.
SIDEBAR: check out this fascinating robot created by Hanson Robotics. It's a robot…of Philip K, Dick…
Leitmotif 19
I am a heretic. Because my parents provided me with an upbringing that encouraged critical thinking, particularly about conceptions of faith, philosophy, dogma, and holy scripture, I discovered that, at my core, I was a heretic—a theorist at substantial variance with established beliefs/customs accepted by religious organizations. Although it's a term more often used about Abrahamic religions/myths, I don't mean that I am heretical only concerning Christianity, Islam, or Judaism. I'm a heretic in most religions and even in non-religious contexts. Like Asimov, I consider heresy an abstraction that may be conceived in political, socioeconomic, or scientific contexts.
And yes—I am a Hermeticists. Hermeticists are supporters of a philosophical and esoteric tradition known today as Hermeticism—philosophical systems that emerged in parallel with early Christianity and Neoplatonism. The tradition emerged most likely during the late 2nd century CE. But, because Christianity was rapidly being adopted formerly as State religions during Late Antiquity, traditions such as Hermeticism, Gnosticism, the Chaldean Oracles, Orphic and Pythagorean literature were suppressed into underground and esoteric societies.
But then Renaissance came.
The villainous banker Cosimo de Medici (the patriarch of the Medici family) was a lover of the arts, paintings, and architecture. As such, he would regularly send out agents such as Gemistos Plethon to scour Europe and its outskirts for rare and fascinating treasures he could add to his ever-growing collection. Of these agents, an Italian painter named Leonardo da Pistoia, in 1460, returned from a Syrian monastery with some tractates referred to as the Corpus Hermeticum—a collection of 17 Greek treatises that were attributed to the mythical figure Hermes Trismegistus, a syncretic combination of the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian god Thoth.
Simultaneously, Gemistos Plethon brought back the lost works of Plato to de'Medici. As the scholar Frances Yates explains, de'Medici insisted that the Corpus Hermeticum be translated FIRST. Plato could wait.
You see, before the late 17th century, the mythical, ancient Egyptian Priest Hermes Trismegistus was known across the world as a contemporary of the legendary Abraham of Sumeria or Zarathustra of Iran.
NOTE: in modern Farsi, Zarathustra was known as زرتشت, Zartosht.
Hermes Trismegistus was thought to have predated Moses and Orpheus. He was considered THEIR teacher. His "writings" were considered Prisca theologia, the doctrine that a single, ancient theology exists in all religions and that it was given by God to man in antiquity.
Hermes was known as the third great man of history to the early Christians—first Enoch, then Noah, and then, the Egyptian priest-king, Hermes Trismegistus.
So de'Medici wanted to know the oldest, primeval, and, presumably, divine secrets of history, and as such, the Corpus Hermeticum was translated first. This gave birth and inspired the art and philosophy of Marsilio Ficino, Lodovico Lazzarelli, and Paracelsus. They, in turn, developed works collective known as the Technical Hermetica (i.e., alchemical, magical, astrological, etc.). Later, in the Renaissance (late 17th, early 18th Century), luminaries like Isaac Newton (the most influential physicist, theologian, astronomer, and alchemist of the Enlightenment Era), Jan Baptist van Helmont (founder of Pneumatic Chemistry), and Robert Boyle (founder of modern chemistry) wrote and demonstrated their own dedication to the Hermetic tradition and formally acknowledged the role it had played in their work.
But in 1614, with the advent of the new science of Philology, Isaac Casaubon, a Swiss scholar, analyzed the original Greek texts that da Pistoia brought to Italy and concluded that the writings could not have been the work of an ancient Egyptian priest. In fact, Casaubon dated the tractates to the mid to late 2nd Century CE.
This declaration killed the then two millennia practice of the Hermetic tradition. It was more formally recognized as a Christian heresy. As such, those that pursued the Hermetic tradition (philosophy, art, alchemy, astrology, predictive prognostication, etc.) would be jailed or put to death.
The Christian establishment of the era didn’t condemn the Hermetic teachings as fraudulent, as evinced by the “science” of Philology. But they did allow it to be known as paganic. The Corpus Hermeticum was positioned at the very start of the European Renaissance to be more aligned with the ancient ways of natural magic, or more closely associated with the heresies of the previous millenia, the then perceived-to-be dangerous Alchemists and the Magus of West Asian cultures. These efforts by the Christian Europeans were meant to demonstrate religious power, dominance, and superiority. To stave off those European border nations that did not adhere to the ways of the Anglican, Orthodox, Jewish, Reformationist or Catholic Christian Churches (e.g. many of the then Franks, Turks, the Bohemians or Czechinians, the Albanians, the Bosnians), not to mention the Islamic, Vedic, Persian, and East Asian nations that were fast becoming interdependent with European Christians.
But again, it’s true that they were never condemned and were even revered by many prominent ecclesiastics. For example, an authoritative volume of the Hermetic books was printed in Ferrara in 1593. It was edited by a Cardinal Patrizzi, who recommended that these works should replace Aristotle as the basis for Christian philosophy and should be diligently studied in schools and monasteries.
My teeny-tynie mind boggles at the turn Western culture might have taken had Hermetic teachings replaced Aristotelian theology of Thomas Aquinas as the normative doctrine of the Catholic Church!
Leitmotif 20
Olga. She came into my life in 2004 in Los Angeles, California. We started dating a year later, moved in with one another the year after that, got engaged, and lived a holy marriage together for 16 beautiful years. She was tortured to death over the last three years of her life by a neurological syndrome known as Motor Neuron Disease everywhere else. Still, here in the USA, we know it as Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis—ALS.
Other than my parents, she IS the light of my world and continues to be my divine muse, a transcended confidant, and my forever-entangled self.
In my next submission, dear reader, I’ll attempt to coagulate the motifs above into a set of four components that comprise the glyph, my Kali Caduceus Monas Hieroglyphica…
Made into a movie named Blade Runner by Ridley Scott in 1982; it spawned a spinoff movie named Blade Runner 2049
Made into a film by Richard Linklater in 2006
What was later combined with the plot of The Simulacra and adapted by the Wachowski’s into The Matrix movies
Made into a movie named Total Recall by Paul Verhoeven in 1990; remade in 2012 by Len Wiseman
What was later combined with the plot of VALIS and adapted by the Wachowski’s into The Matrix movies
Had a significant impact later in my life concerning my wife and me and how we handled her ALS condition
Made into a movie by Steven Spielberg in 2002
Made into a film by John Woo in 2003
Really tough to get through. Only recommended for the die-hard type…
Made into an Amazon Prime series in 2015