ALSO BY GARY LACHMAN
Revolutionaries of the Soul: Reflections on Magicians, Philosophers, and Occultists
Aleister Crowley: Magick, Rock and Roll, and the Wickedest Man in the World
The Caretakers of the Cosmos: Living Responsibly in an Unfinished World
Madame Blavatsky: The Mother of Modern Spirituality
The Quest for Hermes Trismegistus: From Ancient Egypt to the Modern World
Swedenborg: An Introduction to His Life and Ideas
Jung the Mystic: The Esoteric Dimensions of Carl Jungs Life and Teachings
The Dedalus Book of Literary Suicides: Dead Letters
Politics and the Occult: The Left, the Right, and the Radically Unseen
Rudolf Steiner: An Introduction to His Life and Work
The Dedalus Book of the Occult: The Garden of Hermetic Dreams (ed.)
A Dark Muse: A History of the Occult
In Search of P. D. Ouspensky: The Genius in the Shadow of Gurdjieff
A Secret History of Consciousness
Turn Off Your Mind: The Mystic Sixties and the Dark Side of the Age of Aquarius
Two Essays on Colin Wilson
AS GARY VALENTINE:
New York Rocker: My Life in the Blank Generation with Blondie, Iggy Pop, and Others, 19741981
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lachman, Gary, 1955
The secret teachers of the western world / by Gary Lachman.
pages cm
ISBN 978-0-698-13722-6
1. OccultismHistory. 2. Occultists. I. Title.
BF1411.L235 2015
130dc23
2015021615
Cover design by Tom McKeveny
Version_1
ANNOTATED TABLE OF CONTENTS
Esotericism as rejected knowledge Why is it rejected? Iain McGilchrist and The Master and His Emissary Our Other Self Dual Realities Differences between the right and left brain Whos the Boss? Opposition is true friendship Left-Brain Aggression Leonard Shlain and The AlphabetVersus the Goddess Esotericism and the Right Brain Structures of Consciousness Jean Gebser and The Ever-Present Origin The Mental-Rational Structure and the Left Brain Hermetic Renaissance Anti-Hermes Marin Mersenne Integration Consciousness Wars Bringing It All Together Integrating opposites The law of three A Double-Truth Universe Our Secret Teachers
Aurea Catena The Golden Chain of adepts The Corpus Hermeticum The prisca theologia What is esotericism? Gnosis The perennial philosophy Esoteric schools The Old World Owen Barfield and the evolution of consciousness Participation Rudolf Steiner and picture thinking How Old Is the Sphinx? Ren Schwaller de Lubicz Ancient astronomers The Intelligence of the Heart Egyptian consciousness Symbolique Henri Bergsons Brain Aldous Huxleys mind A Successful Adaptation Limiting consciousness Intuition The Nineveh Number The Birds-Eye View Calculating prodigies How Old Is Man? Neanderthal Man Two Realities Cities of Dreams The Seven Sisters Direct Perception What Happened? A shift toward the left A Necessary Loss The change from old consciousness to new
Karl Jaspers and the axial age An axis of history A global shift in consciousness Question Time Birth of the western world The rise of the thinker and the end of myth Philosophical wonder Lost in the Stars Thales and the pre-Socratics The search for the arche Order in the Flux A Harmonious Man Pythagoras of Samos A beautiful cosmos The music of the spheres A Short Life of Pythagoras Its All in the Numbers Quality, not quantity Harmonizing opposites Giving form to matter A Philosophical Life The Pythagorean Brotherhood Orpheus and the Mysteries Demeter and Persephone A psychedelic kykeon? Purifying the Soul Dionysus Reason and myth The Permanent Needs of Human Nature Francis Cornford and From Religion to Philosophy The mythic roots of thought Plato Platos Academy The Immortal Soul Socrates The Forms Esotericism as Platonism? The myth of the cave A Portable Tomb Practice dying Jeremy Naydler Platonic Shamans
Aristotle vs. Plato A left-brain philosophy? Aristotle and the church Biology, not geometry The first systematic thinker The Lyceum The Peripatetics Differences from Platos Academy Is it Logical? Let A=A The law of noncontradiction and the excluded middle Either/or vs. both/and Beyond logic Philosophy in Difficult Times Cynics, Skeptics, Epicureans, and Stoics The search for ataraxia Return of the Mysteries Right-brain religion? Isis and Cybele The taurobolium Last stand of paganism The cult of Mithras Military mysteries Soothsayers and Wonderworkers The Sibyls The Juliani and the Chaldean Oracles Apollonius of Tyana The Lamia Jesus Christ, the Secret Teacher Similarities between Apollonius and Jesus A pagan Christ The Jesus Mysteries Was Jesus a mushroom? A Secret Christianity? Morton Smith and the secret Gospel The Gospel of Thomas Thunder, Perfect Mind The Gnostics Early Christian critics A False World The demiurge and the left brain Emanations and archons A cosmic prison: Heidegger and Gurdjieff Hylics, psychics, and pneumatics Conspiracy theories and the hermeneutics of suspicion Gnostics at Work Mani, Valentinus, Basilides of Alexandria, Carpocrates, Simon Magus and Sophia Antinomianism Marcion The Roots of Gnosticism Merkabah mysticism The Essenes and the retreat to the desert Zoroastrianism Platonism run wild
Alexander the Great and the founding of Alexandria Aristotles student No worlds left to conquer Rise of the Ptolemies A City of Sects and Gospels Death of Cleopatra The religious mysteries of Egypt Fusion of Greek and Egyptian religious ideas Syncretism Serapis The spiritual marketplace The library of Alexandria Amr ibn alAas: burn the books to heat the baths Episteme and gnosis The Other Gnostics Clement of Alexandria The Need for Symbols Philo of Alexandria The Great Chain of Being Origen A eunuch for God A posthumous heretic Against Celsus A Gnostic Trinity Apocatastasis Thrice Greatest Hermes Who were the Hermetists? When Thoth met Hermes The Book of Thoth The Asclepius Bad days for Egypt The Creation According to Hermes G. R. S. Mead and the doubting mind Nous A creature of two worlds The Journey Through the Planets A pre-Christian Christianity The ladder of consciousness Cosmic Consciousness If you do not make yourself equal to God you cannot understand him Hermetic participation Drawing Down the Gods Theurgy Plotinus and the Man He Was Looking For Disdain for the body No pictures, please Ammonius Saccas A transcendent deity