Joscelyn Godwin - The Golden Thread: The Ageless Wisdom of the Western Mystery Traditions

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GOLDEN THREAD

The Ageless Wisdom of the Western Mystery Traditions

JOSCELYN GODWIN

Theosophical Publishing House

Wheaton, Illinois Chennai, India

Learn more about Joscelyn Godwin and his work at www.questbooks.net

Copyright 2007 by Joscelyn Godwin

First Quest Edition 2007

Quest Books

Theosophical Publishing House

PO Box 270

Wheaton, IL 60187-0270

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Cover image: Philosopher with Flask, illustration from the First

Treatise of Splendor Solis. British Library Board. All rights reserved. Harley .3489 f4.

Cover design, book design, and typesetting by Dan Doolin

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Godwin, Joscelyn.

The golden thread: the ageless wisdom of the Western mystery
traditions / Joscelyn Godwin; foreword by Richard Smoley.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-0-8356-0860-2

1. Mysteries, Religious. I. Title.

BL610.G625 2007

ISBN for electronic edition, e-pub format: 978-0-8356-2138-0

5 4 3 2 1 * 07 08 09 10 11

Contents

Foreword

W isdom crieth without, she uttereth her voice in the streets, we read in a book of ancient wisdom. I have called, and ye refused; I have stretched out my hand, and no man regardeth (Prov. 1:20,24). Although we in the modern (or postmodern) world are fond of congratulating ourselves on our advancements, it would be hard to read these verses without observing how little has changed since the remote time when they were written. Wisdom, it seems, is always crying in the streets and is never, or rarely, heard. This fact is, to all appearances, as much a part of the human condition as birth, death, suffering, and work.

Even in this context, it would appear that the fate of wisdom in the West has been an unusually dark one. What has survived of it has done so under almost unimaginably inhospitable circumstances. Consider: sixteen hundred years ago, a persecuted faith that suddenly became the state religion of the Roman Empire jumped at the chance to avenge the ills that had been visited upon it, suppressing all its rivals, closing their schools, burning their libraries, and chasing their philosophers out of the country. When, not long after, the empire collapsed (partly thanks to the new faith, which had diverted the empires resources toward persecuting heretics rather than combatting external foes), the event ushered in centuries of oblivion, an age when, in Western Europe at any rate, even the most learned men could scarcely write a grammatical sentence.

Centuries later, as this ill-starred civilization began to lift its head out of ignorance, it found itself in the clutches of the same church, which, claiming spiritual hegemony over the entire planet, tried to institute what historian Paul Johnson has called a total society. It was the first attempt at totalitarianism as we know it: the church claimed the right not only to external allegiance but to control over the inmost thoughts of its subjects. If in these times the same organization proved to be a protector of the ancient wisdom almost as often as it was a persecutor, we can take it only as proof that there is nothing totally good or totally evil under the sun.

When, further centuries later, the hegemony of the church began to wane, it was supplanted by a new religion or pseudoreligion, one that denied the existence of any reality other than the purely physical and mechanical, and which sought to govern the life and behavior of humanity solely on the basis of physical laws (or on some interpretation of them). The only reality, says the new religion, is quantity; what cannot be weighed or measured or counted does not exist, or might as well not exist.

This is where we are today. If somewhere in all this, wisdomor the love of wisdom, which is virtually the same thinghas survived, we can ascribe the fact only to the benevolence of some higher power, or, perhaps, to the hidden thirst of humanity, which longs for wisdom often even without knowing what it is longing for. We have also to give credit to the courage and prowess of a few individuals who are spread out so thinly over the centuries that it is no exaggeration to call their line a thread. Because this line is a precious onevery likely the most precious of allit is also appropriate to call it a golden thread.

In this work, Joscelyn Godwin traces this golden thread from its origins in the eras of legend, when fact and myth shade into one another so that they are now indistinguishable, to the present day, when the thread of wisdom has, in its subtle and all but imperceptible way, has not only survived but has managed to nourish and sustain the civilization that has so often been its persecutor. If any tradition has been a better exemplar of the admonition Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you (Matt. 5:44), I do not know of it. Even modern science, which now threatens to become a false and oppressive faith in its own right, owes its birth to this golden thread, which (as Professor Godwin shows) championed the inquiry into the workings of nature at a time when such inquiry was condemned as an unwarranted intrusion into the affairs of God.

It would be out of place for me here to attempt to describe either the history or the teachings of the Western esoteric tradition, since that is what Professor Godwin does so masterfully in this collection of essays. But it does seem appropriate to point out that in this tradition, knowledge is never merely about something. One cannot know something without experiencing it. Professor Godwin demonstrates this truth in an unusually subtle and powerful way. He explicates some of the most obscure and problematic ideas of the Western esoteric traditionquestions dealing with such matters as the survival of the soul after death, or the nature of entities on the subtle planesin the context of a fascinating and illuminating story. I say this only to stress to readers that this work, in addition to its wealth of historical facts, also contains a treasure of rare and profound insights into the very substance of this tradition. Many of these insights appear in the endnotes, and I would strongly encourage readers not to overlook these.

The last chapter of this work, entitled The End of the Thread?, asks whether this line of knowledge, which, both legend and scripture tell us, goes back to the very beginnings of the human race, is coming to an end now. If one looks at the surface of things, the answer almost seems foregone. But if we take a step back from the noise and anxiety of our time and see the matter in a wider view, I think it becomes reasonable to conclude that the golden thread is continuing and will continue as it always has. In fact the very existence of the book that you hold in your hands, and the work of the author who has created it, is testimony to that fact.