From‏‏‎ ‎Cosmos to Chaos

Three gurus of śaṃkarian Vedānta, on different occasions and in different locations in India, had asked us to write a series of articles on the traditions that had succeeded one another in the West. Above all, they wished us to explain to them the reasons why, by departing from all traditional attitudes, the West had…

The term Religion derives from the Latin Religio, and is composed by two different roots, res, i.e. “thing”, and the verb ligo, “to tie”. In this context it is not clear the real meaning of res, thing. It seems that res has been used to define all the citizens and the public goods included in…

In the article “Religion and Dharma” we have described the main points of difference between the two concepts. However there is another aspect that sharply divides the Western Religions and the Hindū Dharma. In Hindū Dharma at every social and intellectual level it is well known what is mokṣa, the fourth and supreme aim (puruṣārtha)…

The meaning of the word “initiation” correctly expresses the saṃskṛta term dīkṣā. It derives from the Latin term initiatio, which described the ritual acceptation of a disciple in an initiatory organization, known as mysterium.

In Archaic Greece anyone who was not satisfied of the narrow aims and means of religious exoterism, had to applay to a sanctuary of some Mysteries to be initiated. There, the mystagogue ritually prepared the aspirant to initiation, prescribing him purifications, fasts and other preliminary rituals.

With the previous short articles we intended to provide the traditional hindū readers with the first critical tools to understand the general situation of Western Civilization. Further details will be provided with next contributions, in this case referred to a particular field or period. By gathering this information, our readers will be able to dissolve…

There is a “Holy Land” par excellence, which is the prototype for any other. That spiritual centre, to which the other sacred lands are subject, is the seat of the Primeval Tradition, or Sanātana Dharma, from which all the other Traditions, in dhārmika or religious shape, have derived adapting themselves to a time, to a…

The Greek poet Hesiod has been the first to hand down the most important information about the ancient western mythology. He wrote that during the Golden Age men lived without suffering anguish, misery and old age. They fed on the fruits that the earth spontaneously offered in abundance. Human beings were born directly from the…

Plato informs us that for the Atlanteans the preferred sacrificial victim was the bull. In Greek mythology, the sacrifice of the bull has been established during the Bronze Age by Titan Prometheus, brother of Atlas.

Before addressing the subject of ancient Greek civilization and its religion, let us point out some notes that explain its general characteristics. We start exposing some aspects of the dark side of this civilization that corresponds to its Antlantidean component. This preface is necessary considering that these features have negatively influenced the whole Western civilization…

The "bright side" of Greek civilization is the result of positive adjusts due to the Hyperborean influence on Greek society of Atlantean origin. Ancient Greek historians, in fact, tell the several mysterious visits to Greece by Hyperborean emissaries coming from the North.

Esoterism, the Mysteries: In ancient Greece, from immemorial time, esoterism, the initiatic dominion, had the form of Mysteries. As already explained in the third article in this series (3- Initiation and Mysticism), Mystery means something incommunicable, as well as myste, the initiate, has the same meaning and etymological origin of muni, the one who remains…

Pythagoras was born in 570 a. C. in Samos, the easternmost among the Greek Islands, important site of commercial and cultural exchanges. His works have been lost. The information about his life and his teachings comes from later authors who handed down what they knew about him mostly by oral traditions and by some written…

Plato (428/427 B.C.) was born in Athens from an illustrious noble family: His father was descendant of Codrus, the last King of Athens and his mother of Solon. Therefore he had an aristocratic education. He had Socrates as teacher and, in his works he transmitted the thought and the personality of the philosopher. However, Socrates…

In conclusion of this series of articles concerning the ancient Greek Civilization we give a brief description of the two Epic Poems that de facto became its sacred texts. Greek literature begins in the 8th century B. C. with these Epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, attributed to the blind poet Homer, about whom we…

The second Poem of Homer, the Odyssey (Ὀδύσσεια, read Odǘsseia), relates the sea travels of Odysseus (Ὀδυσσεύς, read Odüssèus), the Greek hero returning to his Kingdom, the island of Ithaca, after the destruction of Troy.

In 337 B.C. Philip the II, King of Macedonia, seized the whole Greece, taking it away from the Persian hegemony. Macedonia was a small kingdom located north of Greece, considered by the Hellenes as a barbarian country. The great military and administrative ability of its ruling dynasty led Macedonia to become a colossal Empire. Alexander…

In ancient Greek, gnosis (γνῶσις, read gnòsis) meant the knowledge reached through the initiation path of the Mysteries. The word is related to the saṃskṛta term jñāna both in etymology and purport. Therefore, it was synonymous with sophia (σοφία, read sofìa), wisdom or sapience. However, gnosis also had the sense of the intellectual and discriminative…

When the Greeks conquered and destroyed Troy with fire, Æneas had escaped it taking with him both the images of protective Deities of the city and the simulacra of the Ancestors. After crossing the sea among a thousand dangers, the Trojan prince landed on the shore of Latium, a region of central Italy.

In antiquity, Rome was ruled by seven Kings, characters participating in both mythical and historical reality. In fact, they are comparable in many ways to the seven Manus of the past, since each one of them brought a different legislation to the state. These rulers are reminiscent of the seven ṛṣi and the seven planets…

With the name of Celts, we identify a group of tribes that, around 1000 BC, descended from the north and expanded into Scotland, England and Ireland and, from there, over a good part of continental Europe. The name of these similar populations comes from the name of the priestly caste that characterized them with their…

The Sumerians arrived in the South Mesopotamia (current Iraq) around 4000 BC. According to their written sources, they arrived by sea from the East. The populations that they found and subjugated in that area were the Semitic branch of the Sea Peoples, which we have already found as heirs of the degenerate Atlantean civilization. The…

As mentioned in the previous chapter, the Bible of the Jews identifies with the Law (Tōrāh), composed of first five Books (Greek Πεντάτευχος, Pentateuch) attributed to Moses, but certainly elaborated soon after returning to Palestine, i.e. after 520 BC. Only at a later time, a new part called the Prophets was added to the initial…

In the popular use the binomial “Jesus Christ” has become a sort of name and surname. Nothing is more wrong: Christ in Greek means “anointed King”. It is therefore the exact translation of the Hebrew word Messiah (Heb. māšīāḥ), and it indicates the function of Jesus to the eyes of his disciples. The King who…

On Easter Sunday, some disciples went to visit the tomb of Jesus and found it empty. The body had disappeared, leaving only the bandages with which it had been wrapped. Consequently, the disciples proclaimed the resurrection of Christ from the afterworld. They proclaimed that this miracle, unique in the history of humanity, was the sign…

As we have already stated, Westerners are obsessed with temporal becoming. For this reason, they are unable to consider the facts for what they are. They must consider them only in the historical perspective, as if history were able to explain its meaning. The Hebrew part of the Bible, known as the Old Testament, is…

After the Spirit took possession of their hearts, the apostles and the disciples of the Christ began to wander villages and cities performing miraculous healings. Often once again possessed, they spoke languages they did not know. They were not the only ones. In Palestine, that period was marked by turmoil, violence and religious fanaticism and…

In the epistles, St. Paul shows good knowledge of the Greek Mysteric doctrines. In particular, like the Pythagoreans and the Platonists, in the human aggregate he distinguished three levels: the gross body (ὕλη, read hỳle, the substance), the soul (ψυχή, read psykhé) and the spirit (πνεῦμα, read pnéuma). In this way, depending on the preponderance…

As previously described in chapter XIX of this series, the Roman Empire, as an institution, was an initiatic hierarchy that overlapped the Republic, without altering the structure of the latter. The Emperor was the supreme head of the army and, at the same time, was the Grand Master of chivalric initiations. However, only a patrician…

The barbarian populations, fleeing before the push of the Huns proceeding from the East, sought refuge in the westernmost Roman provinces. In this way the Eastern Roman Empire suffered much less the invasions by the Anglo-Saxon peoples. For the Western Roman Empire, the barbarian invasions represented a universal flood, a real pralaya that ended the…

Maewyin Succat, later known as St. Patrick, was born around 385 AD in Britain. His father Calpurnius was a Roman patrician and his mother Conchessa a Briton woman of Druidic priestly descent. At the age of sixteen, he was kidnapped by Scots pirates and brought to Ireland. During the period of captivity he became fascinated…

The Franks were distinguished for their warrior and strategic abilities, and not only for the courage and the ruthlessness typical of the other barbarian peoples of Germanic descent. They were first mentioned by Tacitus who placed them in the region corresponding to the present Belgium, Holland and Rhineland. Throughout the period between the 2nd and…

With the coronation of Charlemagne, not only did the Roman Empire re-emerged on the surface of the diluvial waters of the barbarian invasions, but also the title of Imperator, which designated the head of the Roman military initiatic organization. As already mentioned in the preceding chapters, Augustus was the founder of the Empire. Under his…

Charlemagne (742-814) began structuring the Empire on the basis of the Roman military initiatic organization, an undertaking that was completed by Emperor Henry II the Saint, of the dynasty of Saxony (978-1024). Society was divided into four classes: priests, nobles, free men and servants. The monks were not considered part of the clergy, being in…

We must now dedicate a few words to the historical chronicle necessary to explain the great changes that preceded the collapse of Tradition in the West. ​ Following the custom of the earlier Frankish rulers, Charlemagne divided his dominions into three parts. His son Pepin (or Carloman) received the Kingdom of Italy, which included all…

The deposition in the year 887 of Charles III the Fat, severely invalid, represents the conclusion of the Carolingian dynasty. The Empire, thus, entered a stalemate due to the imperial vacancy. Historians in general, accustomed to joyfully welcoming “revolutions” on every occasion, consider this event a historical turning point from which the Empire underwent a…

Rivers of ink have been written on the subject we are about to present. Unfortunately, the prejudicial hatred against Tradition, which has since dominated Western thought, has given it a partisan description. Sometimes, in the interpretation of facts, reality has been overturned. For this reason, we will try to offer a traditional revision, which reflects…

The first important sees of Christianity were those of Jerusalem, Rome, Alexandria of Egypt and Antioch of Syria. These wealthy cities of the Roman Empire had become the residence of the most influential bishops St. James, brother of Jesus the Christ and chief of the Church, was bishop in Jerusalem. This was the main and…

The serious disturbances of the Imperial Ecumene caused by the reckless reforms of Catholicism promoted by the popes of the 11th century caused unpredictable consequences. These are the protagonists of such ruin: the popes of the early 11th century were largely puppets or exponents of the Counts of Tusculum family. Of plebeian origins, they intermarried…

The events that occurred during the 11th century had important repercussions on the civil structure of Latin Christianity. The feudal system, which had shaped the structure of the Empire on the hierarchy of the initiatic paths of the warrior caste, had entered in crisis. The Roman Catholic Church, restored by the will of the Emperors,…

From the historical point of view, the novels of both the Round Table and the Grail suggest an underground current that emerged at a given moment. Soon, however, it retracted to become invisible, almost as if an obstacle or an imminent danger had been felt. In fact, these novels appeared in a short period of…

The whole Arthurian narrative is an allegory, whose knots must be solved by interpreting the symbols. So far, we have described the adventures of the Round Table as the normal turn of events in the course of the life of knights. To be clearer, the aspiring knight arrives at the presence of King Arthur and…

Who were in reality the authors of the novels of King Arthur and the Holy Grail? They were poets who belonged to a category usually known as troubadours. They were all of noble or clerical-monastic descent. As already demonstrated, the troubadours were the initiatic knightly brotherhood of the Faithful of Love. At the beginning they…

Troubadours and Faithfuls of Love used to write sonnets, songs and ballads in rhyme. They communicated with each other in a hidden way, responding in kind (literally “responding in rhymes”). The answer was recognizable as it reproduced exactly the same pattern of rhymes of the received message. We report as an example, two well-known exchanges…

Guido Guinizzelli was master (sskrt. guru) to a young Florentine aristocrat, Guido de’ Cavalcanti (1255-1300). Blessed with a strong personality, acute intelligence and wisdom, Cavalcanti succeeded Guido Guinizzelli in the magisterium (sskrt. gurutva). A group of young troubadours formed around him; among them there was Ser (Eng. Sir) Durante son of Alighiero degli Alisei, better…

Since no one had been able to explain his spiritual situation, Dante began pondering over the meaning of his swings of mood, so erratic and contradictory. With an introspective investigation, he lucidly described his persistently alternating shifts of attraction and repulsion for Beatrice-Holy Wisdom. With a burning desire, Love constantly drove him to meet his…

At the end of The New Life, Dante declared that he had reached the “admirable vision”. That work is the account of his inner journey, starting from the initiatic rebirth to the ever higher inner experiences, cadenced by periods symbolically represented by the number nine, up to the actual realization of the level of perfect…

Dante predicted that two popes, who that time were still alive, were destined to hell. They were Boniface VIII and Clement V. The former was the most fanatical supporter of the temporal supremacy of the Church over the Emperor, the kings and princes of western Christianity; the grey eminence behind the papacy of his predecessor,…

Since the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem (70 AD) and the consequent anti-Roman revolt of Bar Kokhba (132-135 AD), Jewish esotericism had remained alive in the communities of the Diaspora. Gnosticism and Neoplatonism had exerted an influence only on the community of Alexandria in Egypt which, after the Arab invasion of the mid-seventh century,…

Certainly, it is not easy to define exactly what was meant by Hermetism over the centuries. In fact, depending on the periods and traditional areas, this term has taken on different meanings. As it has al-ready been pointed out, all the traditions that flourished in the West have had a predominantly cosmo-logical imprint. Prisoners of…

Until the 11th century, the only Hermetic text preserved in western Christianity since the Hellenistic era was the Asclepius, a Latin version of the Greek original attributed to Apuleius of Madaurus. The text deals mainly with the rituals that the ancient Egyptian priests carried out to charge the images of their gods with the powers…

The change in Renaissance mentality was caused by the fact that the Empire and the Catholic Church remained an empty shell for the loss of chivalric and monastic esotericism (ars regia and ars sacerdotalis). The initiatic organizations, corresponding to some guilds of arts and crafts, remained the only ones to pass on rites and sciences…

All the above resulted in an irrational hatred towards all that was Latin or Roman. The Germanic and Anglo-Saxon peoples, by following Protestantism and thus rejecting Latinization and Rome which had partially brought them into civilization, returned to their barbaric origins.

This is what really happened at the end of the Middle Ages. Previously, the situation had remained for long centuries under the control of initiatic organizations and of ecclesiastical and imperial structures. In some peripheral areas, only later converted to Christianity, legends and superstitions of the ancient Latin, Celtic and, mostly, Germanic religiosity remained. As…

Before addressing the theme proposed in the title, we will have to mention the problem of the relationship between the new humanistic science and religion. Already in Llull and Nicholas of Cusa we had found that knowledge had split into two opposing domains. Or rather, secular science had declared itself superior to faith.

Emperor Charles V of Habsburg had inherited the immense territories of the Kingdom of Spain, as well as the not inconsiderable fiefdoms of the House of Austria and Burgundy. The territories of the Kingdom of Spain included the new Spanish conquests in the two Americas.

In 1614, in Kassel, Wilhelm Wessel’s printing house published a booklet in German, whose long title is known in its shorter version: Fama Fraternitatis . It tells the story of a Friar C. R., an impoverished nobleman and German monk, who traveled to the Holy Land, heading first to Damascus with the intention of reaching…

What was John Dee doing in Bohemia from 1583 to 1589 during his secret mission? It is generally said that, together with his companion, the necromancer and magician Edward Kelley, he visited Rudolf II of Habsburg (1552-1612) in Prague. At court, the two allegedly involved the Emperor in evocations of angels and in rituals of…

In contemporary history books the events we have described in the previous chapters are narrated with shameless factiousness. In fact, the Protestant Reformation is shown as an initiative for the palingenesis of a freer and fairer Europe, that soon after had been attacked by the ruthless obscurantist reaction of the inquisitorial Catholic church backed, of…

Before tackling this third-rail subject, it is necessary to give an explanation on the correct use of some terms. Nowadays, in all Western languages, the word ‘proselytism’, of Greek origin, has a strong negative meaning: an effort of propagandistic zeal that aims to acquire new followers by subtle persuasion, cunning and deception.

In 1606, Roberto de Nobili (1557-1656) arrived in Madurai full of missionary zeal. He soon realised that the saṃnyāsin were the most respected category in India. He therefore decided to disguise himself as a Hindū renunciant, he wore the ochre-coloured garment and carried the daṇḍa. The false daṇḍi saṃnyāsin learned Sanskrit and wrote a false…

With the foundation of the Bank of England, William of Orange-Nassau was able to finally pay off his debts by discharging them onto public and private borrowing. This system, nowadays predominant, causes that the money the citizen thinks he is earning and owning is actually his debt to the private bank issuing.

Šabbetay Ṣewi (1626-1676), son of a wealthy poultry merchant from Izmir, had experienced psychic breaks in the form of uncontrolled visions from an early age. In an attempt to bring some order to these experiences, he devoted himself to the study of Qabbalah from his adolescence. The Qabbalah he followed was not the traditional initiatic…

Since the ‘Rosicrucians’ first, and afterwards the ‘Unknown Superiors’ would have been the instigators of an infiltration aimed at fomenting the mental confusion of which Freemasonry was a victim, it is completely inappropriate to claim that they were anything like siddhas or even jīvanmuktas.

Applied in this translational sense, revolution simply means the overthrow of anything conforms to the natural order recognised by all men of sound mind. In the historical-political sense, however, it means the extermination of a dominant social class and its replacement by a subordinate one.

Occultism reappeared at the beginning of the 19th century on the wave of Romantic horror literature. We refer above all to the revival of the Ossianic literature of Byron, Polidori and Mary Shelley in their Swiss Hellfire cenacle.

As it is in the nature of things what is born eventually dies and even traditional doctrines and rituals born in the empirical domain, eventually will fade away. Only non-dual metaphysics is exempt from the vicissitudes of time, being one, eternal and absolute. This is the true meaning of Vincit Omia Veritas.