But it is the perfect combination of an artificial ‘temple’ with a natural ‘temple’ that can act as the most inspiring and effective ‘temple-talisman’ of all. Think of the Palace of Versailles in France, the Taj Mahal in India, Angkor Wat in Cambodia. Think of a city like Paris in the spring, or Rome in the summer, or Washington, DC in the fall and you begin to understand the principle here.
All this may sound like some hocus-pocus pseudoscience in our present climate of intense empirical, rational and analytical thinking. But irrespective of what we may think of talismanic magic or so-called sacred science, the fact remains that we are complex creatures and we have evolved over billions of years under the subtle influence of nature. Our senses act as finely tuned receivers that enable us to understand nature and the cosmos around us intuitively. Such abilities are quite simply, natural magic and in ancient times were skillfully amplified by enhancing and capturing the multiple aspects of nature within well-defined symbols and talismans. We would go so far as to say that the ancient Egyptian priests were the true masters of this arcane magic and that an Egyptian temple was not really a temple at all so much as a powerful talisman meant to influence events in the macrocosm. Enter an Egyptian temple and you enter a model of the universe as perceived by the inner human mind. A temple was not merely a place of worship, but an environment that you had to integrate with – its ambiance, its harmonic proportions, its carefully chosen images, its symbols, it magical texts and its talismanic statuary, all of which were charged with archetypal values, cosmic principles and natural ideals. And yet in the Picatrix we are presented with something far more ambitious than a sacred talismanic temple. We are presented with no less than an esoteric manual for the transformation of great cities, and even perhaps the whole world, into talismans …
Temple of the world
In the Hermetic text known as the Asclepius there is a call sent to a future generation of ‘wise men’ to bring about the full restoration and restitution of the true religion of the world57 – that is the magical talismanic religion which was once practiced in the sacred land of Egypt. This call is highly reminiscent of the mysterious ‘Organisation’ spoken of in the Nag Hammadi Gnostic texts which date from approximately the same period and which even include a fragment of the Asclepius. As the reader will recall from Chapter Five the texts leave us with the impression that this ‘Organisation’ was some sort of Gnostic secret society and that its objective was also the restoration of a ‘true religion’ – in its case, Gnosis.
Let's look at the relevant passages of soaring prose in the Asclepius, in which Hermes Trismegistus laments and prophecies to his favourite pupil Asclepius the forthcoming and inevitable destruction of Egypt and its ancient and most revered religion: Do you not know, Asclepius, that Egypt is an image of heaven or, to be more precise, that everything governed and moved in heaven came down to Egypt and was transferred there? If truth were told, our land is the temple of the whole world. And yet, since it befits the wise to know all things in advance, of this you must not remain ignorant: a time will come when it will appear that the Egyptians paid respect to divinity with faithful mind and painstaking reverence – to no purpose. All their holy worship will be disappointed and perish without effect, for divinity will return from earth to heaven, and Egypt will be abandoned. The land that was the seat of reverence will be widowed by the powers and left destitute of their presence. When foreigners occupy the land and territory, not only reverence will fall into neglect but, even harder, a prohibition under penalty prescribed by law – so-called – will be enacted against reverence, fidelity and divine worship. Then this most holy land, seat of shrines and temples, will be filled completely with tombs and corpses.
O Egypt, Egypt, of your reverent deeds only stories will survive, and they will be incredible to your children! Only words cut in stone will survive to tell your faithful works, and the Scythian or Indian or some such neighbour barbarian will dwell in Egypt. For divinity goes back to heaven, and all the people will die, deserted, as Egypt will be widowed and deserted by god and human. I call to you, most holy river, and I tell your future: a torrent of blood will fill you to the banks, and you will burst over them; not only blood will pollute your divine waters, it will also make them break out everywhere, and the number of the entombed will be much greater than the living. Whoever survives will be recognised as Egyptian only by his language; in his actions he will seem a foreigner.
Asclepius, why do you weep? Egypt herself will be persuaded to deeds much wickeder than these, and she will be steeped in evils far worse. A land once holy, most loving of divinity, by reason of her reverence the only land on earth where the gods settled, she who taught holiness and fidelity, will be an example of utter unbelief. In their weariness the people of that time will find the world nothing to wonder at or worship. This all – a good thing that never had nor has nor will have its better – will be endangered. People will find it oppressive and scorn it. They will not cherish this entire world, a work of God beyond compare, a glorious construction, a bounty composed of images in multiform variety, a mechanism for God's will ungrudgingly supporting his work, a unity of everything that can be honoured, praised and finally loved by those who see it, a multiform taken as a single thing. They will prefer shadow to light, and they will find death more expedient than life. No one will look up to heaven. The reverent will be thought mad, the irreverent wise; the lunatic will be thought brave, and the scoundrel will be taken for a decent person. Soul and teachings about soul (that the soul began immortal or else expected to attain immortality) as I revealed them to you will be considered not simply laughable but even illusory. But – believe me – whoever dedicates himself to reverence of mind will find himself facing a capital penalty. They will establish new laws, new justice. Nothing holy, nothing reverent nor worthy of heaven or heavenly beings will be heard or believed in the mind. How mournful when the gods withdraw from mankind! Only the baleful angels remain to mingle with humans, seizing wretches and driving them to every outrageous crime – war, looting, trickery and all that is contrary to the soul …58
This superb piece of early Hermetic writing very much appears to anticipate the plight of the Egyptians under the Roman occupation of Egypt and, most intriguingly, it also seems to foretell the collapse of the Egyptian religion that was engineered after Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire. Since the Asclepius is dated to no later than the third century AD and, more intriguing, since the decree of the very Christian Emperor Theodosius outlawing ‘paganism’ was not to be issued until AD 391, then the eerie premonitions of the unknown author of this ominous tract are, to say the least, extraordinary. Yet this is not all. For the Lament goes on to promise hope for the future in words that resonate like a temple bell: When all this comes to pass, Asclepius, then the master and father, the god whose power is primary, governor of the first good, will look on this conduct … and in an act of will – which is god's benevolence – he will take his stand against vices and the perversion in everything, righting wrong, washing away malice … then he will restore to the world to its beauty of old so that the world itself will again seem deserving of worship and wonder, and with constant benedictions and proclamations of praise the people of that time will honour the god who makes and restores so great a work. And this will be the geniture of the world: a reformation of all good things, and a restitution most holy and most reverent of nature itself …59
Restoration, reformation and restitution to the ways and beauty of old … But a ‘restoration, reformation and restitution’ by whom? How … and when?
As the text continues it becomes clear that part of the plan – if it is a plan – includes the building or rebuilding of a magical talismanic city along certain well-defined astronomical and symbolic principles: The gods who exercised their dominion over the earth will be restored one day and installed in a city at the extreme limit of Egypt, a city which will be founded towards the setting sun, and into which will hasten, by l
and and sea, the whole race of mortal men …60
According to Frances Yates, the above passage presents us with the image of an enchanted utopia, a sort of ancient Egyptian version of Camelot, created by the manipulation of astral magic by adept priests who, as she says, were conversant in ‘astronomy, mathematics, music, metaphysics, and indeed practically everything for the introduction of the spiritus [astral power] into talismans.’ And all this was achieved, notes Yates by making ‘images of stars inscribed on the correct materials, at the right times, in the right frame of mind and so on.’61 As for the magical city itself, Yates thinks that it ‘might thus be seen both as the ideal Egyptian society before its fall and as the ideal pattern of its future and universal restoration.’62
There is, too, another eerie passage in the Asclepius, where Hermes Trismegistus again addresses his pupil and gives us a tantalising glimpse of how the ancient Egyptians saw their sacred land as a model or ‘image’ of the heavenly landscape and a parallel world of the gods: Do you not know, Asclepius, that Egypt is an image of heaven? Or, to be more precise, that everything governed and moved in heaven came down to Egypt and was transferred there? If truth were told, our land is the temple of the whole world …63
In a Hermetic tract known as the Kore Kosmou, the ‘Virgin of the World’ – i.e. Isis, the Egyptian goddess, the consort of Osiris – makes the following revelation to their son Horus: The earth lies in the middle of the universe, stretched on her back as a human might lie facing towards heaven … Her head lies toward the south … her right shoulder toward the east, and her left shoulder towards the west; her feet lie beneath the Great Bear [north] … But the right holy land of our ancestors [i.e. Egypt] lies in the middle of the earth; and the middle of the human body is the sanctuary of the heart, and the heart is the headquarters of the soul; and that, my son, is the reason why men of this land … are more intelligent [wise]. It could not be otherwise, seeing they are born and bred upon Earth's heart.64
In the above we have an actual geographical scheme which is based on some form of astral magic, where Egypt is said to be at the very centre of the world, right at the crossing of some prime meridian. It is interesting to note that the Great Bear constellation is mentioned in this scheme, for it is well known that ancient Egyptian temples were ritualistically aligned to the Great Bear constellation i.e. Ursa Major, in a ceremony known as the ‘stretching of the cord’. It can now be better understood why in the Asclepius the whole of Egypt is said to be a ‘temple’ or, more specifically, that Egypt is the ‘temple of the world’. Was this what the ancients meant when they called Egypt the ‘land of the gods’? Was it, quite literally, a sacred land fashioned in the image of the cosmos?
The city of Adocentyn
Part IV of the Picatrix seems to elaborate on this theme. Here Hermes Trismegistus is presented as the founder of a magical solar city that, we are told, was designed around astrological ideas and that contained fantastic talismanic statues and other such wonders. The secret knowledge of this magical city of Hermes, claims the unknown author of Picatrix, was passed down the ages by the Chaldean Magi who were adepts in the science of talismanic magic: There are among the Chaldeans very perfect masters of this art and they affirm that Hermes was the first who constructed images by means of which he knew how to regulate the Nile against the motion of the moon. This man also built a temple to the sun, and he knew how to hide himself from all so that no one could see him, although he was within it. It was he, too, who in the east of Egypt constructed a city 12 miles long within which he constructed a castle which had four gates in each of its four parts. On the eastern gate he placed the form of an eagle [Horus?]; on the western gate, the form of a bull [Apis?]; on the southern gate the form of a lion [Sphinx?], and on the northern gate he constructed the form of a dog [Anubis?]. Into these images he introduced spirits which spoke with voices, nor could anyone enter the gates of the city without permission. There he planted trees, in the midst of which was a great tree which bore the fruits of all generation [immortality?]. On the summit of the castle he caused to be raised a tower thirty cubits high on the top of which he ordered to be placed a light-house, the colours of which changed every day until the seventh day after which it returned to the first colour, and so the city was illuminated with these colours. Near the city there was abundance of waters in which dwelt many kinds of fish. Around the circumference of the city he placed engraved images and ordered them in such manner that by their virtue the inhabitants were made virtuous and withdrawn from all wickedness and harm. The name of the city was Adocentyn …65
Dame Frances Yates’ commentary is most helpful: Passed through the vivid imagination of the Arabs of Harran, we seem to have here something that reminds us of the hieratic religious magic described in the Asclepius. Here are the man-made gods, statues of the animal- and bird-shaped gods of Egypt, which Hermes Trismegistus has animated by introducing spirits into them so that they speak with voices and guard the gates of this magical utopia. The colours of the planets flash from the central tower, and these images around the circumference of the City, are they perhaps images of the signs of the zodiac and the decans [constellations] which Hermes has known how to arrange so that only good celestial influences are allowed into the City? The law-giver of the Egyptians [Hermes] is giving laws which must perforce be obeyed, for he constrains the inhabitants of the City to be virtuous, and keeps them healthy and wise, by his powerful manipulation of astral magic … One might say that this City shows us Hermes Mercurius [Trismegistus] in his triple role of Egyptian priest and god-maker, of philosopher-magician, and of king and lawgiver … The pious admirer of those two ‘divine’ books by the most ancient Hermes – the Pimander and the Asclepius – must surely have been struck by this vivid description of a City in which, as in Plato's ideal Republic, the wise is the ruler, and rules most forcibly by means of the priestly Egyptian magic such as described in the Asclepius …66
In the original Arabic version of the Picatrix the name of the magical Hermetic city is not given exactly as Adocentyn but as Al Ashmunain. This turns out to be a real location in Middle Egypt. It stands on the banks of the Nile where there is an abundance of vegetation, fish and fauna, and would indeed have been a paradisiacal spot in antiquity. It was the main cult centre of Thoth/Hermes in Greek and Roman times67 and a famous temple dedicated to Thoth once stood here.68 For this reason the Greeks called it Hermopolis i.e. the city of Hermes. Its original Egyptian name was Kmun, meaning ‘eight’, apparently in honour of a group of eight gods, the Ogdoad, who represented the world before creation.69
We cannot be sure that it was Kmun/Hermopolis/Al Ashmunain that was envisaged by the writers of the Picatrix when they summoned up their vision of the magical, talismanic city of Hermes Trismegistus. The problem is that Adocentyn, as they described it, bears no resemblance to any real region in Egypt – although certainly this was a land in which many ‘temples to the Sun’ existed, the most famous being Heliopolis in the north and Karnak-Luxor in the south. The term Ashmunain in the original text of the Picatrix could also be a corruption of Ain Shams, meaning the ‘Eye of the Sun’, a name still used by Egyptians today to denote the region of Heliopolis.
But what really interests us about the talismanic city of the Picatrix is not so much its very plausible connection to real sacred cities of ancient Egypt. Far more important, in our view, has been its role as an archetype or template for cities to be built or rebuilt in the future, including the capitals of Britain, Italy, France and the United States. We will demonstrate in later chapters that in each of these cases prominent monuments, works of architecture, and sometimes the street plans of whole districts, appear have been harnessed to a secret Hermetic scheme.
If we are right then we have come across the traces of an organisation that has hitherto sustained its existence and purpose undetected for hundreds of years while carrying out immense projects of occult urban planning – all of them ‘hidden’ in full public view. To understand why anyone m
ight have been motivated to do such an audacious thing we must first explore the Hermetic religion that lies behind the cosmic city of Adocentyn.
CHAPTER NINE
TWO PHOENIXES
A divine city hath been built for me, I know it and I know the name thereof…
Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead1
I have come into the city of god – the region which existed in primeval time.
Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead2
The opening into the city is fire … and the god hath made it for those who follow willingly in his train … He hath made the city so that he may dwell therein at will, and none can enter therein except on the day of the great transformations …
Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead3
Specialised scholars who study ancient literature often argue that there is no strong genetic link between the known religious texts of ancient Egypt (which span the period from roughly 2300 BC to 0 BC) and the Hermetic texts composed in Alexandria in Egypt between approximately AD 1 and AD 300. ‘There is a want of technical Egyptian mythological, liturgical and sacerdotal knowledge in the [Hermetic] texts,’ explains Tobias Churton: We really learn nothing about Egyptian religion, except in the most general terms, terms which would not stretch the vocabulary gained by the average reader of a tourist guide to ancient Egypt today.4
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