And, crucially, initiates of the secret societies, like initiates of the Mystery schools, encountered these disembodied Intelligencers in altered states of consciousness. It is Goethe perhaps who writes best about what it feels like to be an idealist in modern times. He writes about feeling the real presence of living interconnections with the natural world and living connections with other people, even though such connections may not be measurable or visible. And crucially he writes about the great universal spirits that hold everything together. What Newton called ‘the Intelligencers’, Goethe calls ‘the Mothers’:
‘We all walk in the mysteries. We do not know what is stirring in the atmosphere that surrounds us, nor how it is connected with our own spirit. So much is certain — that we can at times put out the feelers of our soul beyond its bodily limits… one soul may have a decided influence upon another, merely by means of its silent presence, of which I could relate many instances. It has often happened to me that, when I have been walking with an acquaintance, and have had a living image of something in my mind, he has at once begun to speak of that very thing. I have also known a man who, without saying a word, could suddenly silence a party engaged in conversation by the mere power of his mind.. We all have some electrical and magnetic forces within us; and we put forth, like the magnet itself, some, attractive or repulsive power… With lovers this magnetic power is particularly strong and acts even at a distance. In my younger days I have experienced cases enough, when, during my solitary walks, I have felt a great desire for the company of a beloved girl, and have thought of her till she has really come to meet me. ‘I was so restless in my room,’ she has said, ‘that I could not help coming here.’
Goethe went on to speak about the living connections that underlie such phenomena…
Dwelling in eternal obscurity and loneliness, these Mothers are creative beings; they are the creative and sustaining principle from which proceeds everything that has life and form on the surface of the earth. Whatever ceases to breathe returns to them as a spiritual nature, and they preserve it until there arises occasion for its renewed existence. All souls and forms of what has been, or will be, hover about like cloud in the vast space of their abode… the magician must enter their dominion, if he would obtain power over the form of a being…
IN THE FIFTH CENTURY BC ATHENS AND SPARTA had fought for dominance. In the fourth century they were both overtaken by Macedonia, ruled by the robust Philip II. Plutarch noted that Philip’s son, Alexander, was born on the very day in 356 BC that the Temple at Ephesus was torched by a lunatic.
Each Mystery school taught a wisdom unique to it, which is why Moses and Pythagoras were initiated into more than one. The hierophants at the Mystery school attached to the temple at Ephesus taught the mysteries of Mother Earth, the powers that shape the natural world. In a sense the spirit of this school entered Alexander at birth. Alexander would spend his whole life trying to identify this divine element within.
One day the handsome, fearless boy with the burning eyes and leonine mane tamed a magnificent but fiery horse called Bucephalus that none of Philip’s generals could even mount.
Philip cast about for the greatest mind of the day to be his son’s tutor, and chose Plato’s greatest pupil, Aristotle. Alexander and the older man recognized each other as kindred spirits.
As soon as Plato gave formal, conceptual expression to idealism, it was inevitable that its opposite would quickly be formulated. Instead of deducing the truth about the world from immaterial, universal principles, Aristotle collected and classified the data of the material world. He worked out physical laws by a process of abstraction. Aristotle was therefore able to invent an entirely new and modern way of describing the hidden powers that shape nature. It is often said that the Roman Empire provided a vehicle for the spread of Christianity, and in the same way Alexander created the largest empire the world had yet seen. This, then, became the vehicle for Aristotle’s philosophy.
Philip was assassinated when his son was only twenty, but immediately Alexander established himself as a ruler of genius and an unbeatable military commander. In 334 BC he led an army into Asia, defeating the Persians at the Battle of Issus, even though they were outnumbered by as many as ten to one. Then he swept south through Syria and Phoenicia, before conquering Egypt, where he founded the city of Alexandria. Wherever he went he founded city-states on the Greek model, spreading Greek politics as well as Greek philosophy.
It was part of Alexander’s mission to save the newly evolved consciousness, forged by initiates such as Plato and Euripides, from being swamped by the greater wealth, grandeur and military might of Asia. More particularly, he was to save the new rationality from being swept away by ancient ritualistic clairvoyance and picture-consciousness.
In 331 BC Alexander defeated the Persians again, destroying their ancient capital of Persepolis, before pushing further into Afghanistan and finally into India. There he debated with Brahmin philosophers, the descendants of the Rishis. Admitted to watch the sacred, initiatory rites of the Brahmins, Alexander’s own priests were astonished to see how similar the ceremonies were to their own.
There is a story that Alexander sent a Greek philosopher to summon a Brahmin teacher into his presence, offering great rewards and threatening decapitation if he refused. The philosopher finally tracked down the Brahmin in the depths of the forest and received the following rather dusty response: ‘The Brahmins neither fear death nor desire gold. We sleep deeply and peacefully on forest leaves. Were we to have any material possessions, this would only disturb our slumber. We move freely over the surface of the earth without conflict and all our needs met as by a mother who feeds her baby her milk.’
This was a rare knockback for Alexander. Until the near the end of his life it seemed no one could stand in his way. As has happened only a few times in history, an individual seemed able to bend the whole world to his will.
As I’ve suggested, Alexander’s entire life can be seen as a quest to understand the origins of this divine power. At different times both Perseus and Hercules were claimed as his ancestors, according to variant traditions. Aristotle had given Alexander a copy of Homer’s Iliad, which he learned off by heart, and he sometimes saw himself as a demi-god like Achilles. In 332 BC he went on an expedition to the temple of Amun at the desert oasis of Siwa, some five hundred miles west of Memphis in Egypt. It was said he nearly died on this expedition, though this may be a reference to a ‘mystical death’. What is certain is that he was ‘recognized’ by the priests and initiated there.
It is sometimes speculated that the priests might have told Alexander he was a son of Amun-Zeus. It is supposed that the ceremonial horns he took to wearing afterwards were a mark of this. In some countries he conquered he was remembered as a horned man. In the Koran he appeared as Dhul-Qarnayn, which means ‘the two-horned one’. But according to the secret history, these horns are the horns of a hunter we have already met, and the two fiercely loving friends Gilgamesh and Enkidu, separated by the untimely death of Enkidu, were reunited when they reincarnated as Alexander and Aristotle.
At the age of only thirty-three Alexander ignored warnings by the astrologers of Babylon not to enter their city gates. Two weeks later he died of a fever. It would soon become apparent that Alexander’s empire had been held together only by his personal magnetism.
BUDDHISM EMERGED AS THE FIRST PROSELYTIZING, missionary religion in about 200 BC. Before then the religion you believed in was determined by your race or tribe. Now the human condition was changing. For the uninitiated the spirit worlds were a fading vision, leaving faint traces hard to be certain of, difficult to discern. Inspired by Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, people were developing a capacity for deductive and inductive thought. They were able to weigh up arguments on either side.