HIDDEN SOURCES: Western Esoteric Influence on the Arts

Update on the Second annual CCWE one day conference.

Date: Saturday, 11th October 2008, 9.30am – 5.00pm
Venue: The Unitarian Church building, Emanuel Road, Cambridge, Emmanuel Road, CB1 1JW
The influence of Western Esotericism in Literature, Music and Esoteric Geometry is examined by the following presenters:

MALCOLM GUITE’S KEYNOTE ADDRESS

Western Esotericism and the Arts.

This address will trace the hidden course and some of the sources of the stream of “esoteric” thought and imagery which flows, so often unnoticed through western arts, and in particular will look at literature. The line of esoteric insight and understanding which passes through Boehme to Swedenborg, to Blake and from Blake through to Yeats and so into the “mainstream” of high modernist literature is well known. Less well known is the way renaissance revivals of hermetic learning pass down through Milton, to later poets and especially Coleridge, who was familiar in the original languages of almost the entire Corpus Hermeticum and was also reading and critiquing the German mystical writers and Swedenborg. Indeed it was through Swedenborgian circles that the meeting between Coleridge and Blake was arranged, a hugely significant event which is completely ignored by mainstream literary history. I will suggest in this paper that there is a line to be traced from Coleridge to many “mainstream” nineteenth and and twentieth century writers.

Perhaps the most unlikely literary group to be formed and informed by esoterica, the Oxford Inklings, the group of creative Christian apologists centred around CS Lewis which included Tolkien, Charles Williams and Owen Barfield. He will show that the works of this latter group depend very strongly for their shape and meaning on astrological structure and also on a mysticism of primal sound and harmony. Specifically we will look at how esoteric tradition from the Order of the Golden Dawn passes through Charles Williams to Lewis, whilst at the same time Owen Barfield, a devotee of Rudolph Stiener, is able to persuade Lewis, through the thought of Coleridge, of the creative and truth-bearing powers of imagination.

We will explore the way in which Tolkien’s concept of mytho-poeia affects both his own and Lewis’ writings and finally at the way in which these many themes are harmoniously linked in Tolkien’s work especially the Silmarillion, whose initial images of creation can be traced back via Georgio’s mystical “Harmonia Mundi” to the earliest orphic traditions. At present the Inklings are pigeonholed as “conservative Christians” and often used as blunt weapons in the conflicts between conservative Christianity and both secularism on the one hand .and non Christian spirituality on the other. My contention is that the rediscovery and defence of Christian mysticism in the works of these writers involves a recovery of just those esoteric and mystical elements which could make Christianity a harmonious participant in our contemporary spiritual awakening and not, as some would have it, a fearful forbidder.

MALCOLM GUITE was born in Nigeria and raised in Africa and Canada, Malcolm Guite is a poet and singer-songwriter living in Cambridge, where he also works as a priest and academic. He has published two collections of poetry; Saying the Names 2002 and The Magic Apple Tree 2004 and has also published poems in Radix, The Mars Hill Review, Crux, Second Spring and the Ambler. He has played in rock’n’ roll band The Crocodiles, trad jazz outfit Ecu-Jazz, and is currently front man for Cambridge rockers Mystery Train. He has collaborated with Kevin Flanagan on jazz-poetry and also the oratorio The Ten Thousand Things for which he wrote the libretto. His CD The Green Man is out on Cambridge Riffs and iTunes. www.malcolmguite.com

Some Publications:
What Do Christians Believe? Granta 2006, (Dutch Edition 2007, Greek Edition 2007, American Edition 2008), part of Granta’s new series on different faith-systems: What Do We Believe?.

In preparation for Ashgate: Faith Hope and Poetry to be published in their series Studies in Theology, Imagination and the Arts.

‘Poetry, Playfulness and Truth…’ a chapter on the theology of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest in Faithful Performances; Enacting Christian Tradition ed. Trevor Hart and Stephen Guthrie Ashgate 2007.

Contributions on Numbers and Exodus in Reflections for Daily Prayer; Lent to Pentecost Church House Publishing 2008.

Six poems in Live Simply Canterbury Press 2008

His poems have been published in Radix, Second Spring, Mars Hill Review, Crux, Poetry on the Lake and The Ambler.

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In the field of music we are fortunate to have with us Laurence Wuidar (F.N.R.S.)Docteur en musicologie de l’Université Libre de Bruxelles

Claudio Monteverdi

ESOTERIC TRADITION WITHIN16th and 17th CENTURIES MUSICAL CIRCLES

It is well know that esotericism may be a starting point for musical compositions, such as the works composed for the Masonic loges. It is also well know that esotericism may be the secret key to decipher a musical score, such as the too famous Bach-numerology topic. It is much less known that a lot of composers and musicians were also alchemists, astrologers or magicians.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse various esoteric activities of some sixteenth and seventeenth century composers and musicians, mainly in Italy, where the Inquisition was forever prone to censure them. The esoteric expression of a humanistic encyclopaedism reveals how the figure of the composer was not imaginable per se. Thus we distort history by regarding them only as composers or musical theoreticians. Only by breaking down the wall between the disciplines can we reconstitute the visage of musicians, such as Claudio Monteverdi, Lodovico Zacconi, Pier Francesco Valentini, Theodato Osio or Guido Trasuntino. The interest and the activities (teachings, writings and experiments) of these musicians for the sciences and arts, such as astrology or alchemy, tell us how their knowledge was a multidiscipline one. It also tells us how the musical process of composition has, in fact, synergies with such arts and sciences. That is ‘quintessentially’ true if we look at the enigmatic canons, the hidden message they veil to the profane and reveal to the initiated, as well as the manner they were resolved after a process of ora, labora & invenies (to quote the motto we find in the Mutus liber, in the Amphitheatrum Sapientiae Aeternae of Heinrich Khunrath and in many other enigmatic canons). The composers were the custodians of secret rules, whether astrological, musical or alchemical, they taught to a small number of disciples. Thus their musical activities can not be completely understood if we are not first aware of their esoteric activities.

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Frank Albo is a researcher and teacher from the University of Winnipeg, in Manitoba, Canada, who is well known for his discoveries and writings about the Manitoba Legislature. His research has led to the findings and interpretations of numerous occult/masonic symbols and figures inside the Manitoba Legislative Building. He is curently engaged in doctoral research at Cambridge University.

He introduces us to the Vesica Piscis

THE VESICA PISCIS: THE UNSEATING OF EUCLID,
AND THE RE-APOTHEOIS OF GEOMETRY IN VICTORIAN BRITAIN</strong

This paper posits that the sudden appearance of vesica piscis in the nineteenth century was due to the advent of non-Euclidean geometry. Non-Euclidean geometry threatened traditional views of geometric truth and it was met with vehement resistance from English Freemasons who endorse a geometric theology resting on the infallibility of Euclid. Masonic pundits championed the re-apotheosis of geometry which they indelibly linked to the vesica piscis and its formulation in medieval architecture. Their theories influenced nineteenth century ideas of harmony and proportion promulgated by British architects C.R. Cockerell and F.B. Bond.

1. The Vesica Piscis - Dürer’s brainchild
The term vesica piscis, derives from the Latin translation of Dürer’s practical manual of geometric theory, Underweysung der Messung mit dem Zirckel und Richtscheyt (1525).

2. Frederick Bligh Bond (1864-1945) – necromancer of GlastonburyBond was an architect, Freemason, and numerologist who claimed that the vesica piscis was latent in the plan of Lady Chapel in Glastonbury. His theories of architecture were influenced by Cockerell.

3. Charles Robert Cockerell (1788-1863) – evangelist of the vesica piscis. The nineteenth century professor of architecture responsible for vivifying the popular mystique of the vesica piscis as a formula of exemplary proportion handed down from the Freemasons.

4. Thomas Kerrich (1748-1863) – evangelist of the vesica piscesKerrich argued that the visica piscis had informed the proportions of nineteen churches. His studies published I a popular antiquarian journal impacted Cockerell’s theories of medieval design.

5. Cockerell’s Rules of Design – from Freemasonry to Cesariano
Cockerell presents his tripartite rules of design for ideal beauty and proportions in architecture, which he credits to the Vitruvian commentator, Cesare Cesariano, and the medieval Freemasons.

6. The Unseating of Euclid – nineteenth century innovation of non-Euclidean geometry
The emergence of non-Euclidean geometry in the nineteenth century challenged the universality of Euclid and spawned a proliferation of Masonic texts on the sacrality of the vesica piscis.

7. Re-apotheosis of Geometry in Victorian Britain – Freemasonry’s geometric theology
The Masonic idea that geometry is an exclusive and secret science handed down by God to Euclid and the architect of Solomon’s Temple. In Freemasonry, geometry is a touchstone of divine power.

8. Cockerell’s unwitting legacy – the vesica piscis and the Church of Scientology
From the geometric mysteries of the vesica piscis sparked off by Cockerell’s studies of medieval proportions to an aerial signpost marking the sacred writings of the Church of Scientology.

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Full programme will be posted in a later update.
For enquiries contact: Dr Sophia Wellbeloved: sophia@gurdjieff-books.net

CALL FOR PAPERS CCWE CONFERENCE 2008

THIS IS A CALL FOR PAPERS FOR THE SECOND CCWE CONFERENCE

to be held on Saturday 11th October 2008
in the Unitarian Memorial Church in Cambridge CB1 1JW UK

WESTERN ESOTERICISM & THE ARTS

The Association for the Study of Esotericism website www.aseweb.org gives the following useful definition of esotericism:

The word “esoteric” derives from the Greek esoterikos, and is a comparative form of eso, meaning “within.” Its first known mention in Greek is in Lucian’s ascription to Aristotle of having “esoteric” [inner] and “exoteric” [outer] teachings. The word later came to designate the secret doctrines said to have been taught by Pythagoras to a select group of disciples, and, in general, to any teachings designed for or appropriate to an inner circle of disciples or initiates. In this sense, the word was brought into English in 1655 by Stanley in his History of Philosophy.

Esotericism, as an academic field, refers to the study of alternative or marginalized religious movements or philosophies whose proponents in general distinguish their own beliefs, practices, and experiences from public, institutionalized religious traditions. Among areas of investigation included in the field of esotericism are alchemy, astrology, Gnosticism, Hermeticism, Kabbalah, magic, mysticism, Neoplatonism, new religious movements connected with these currents, nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first century occult movements, Rosicrucianism, secret societies, and theosophy.

It is also important to consider that the major world religions have all been influenced in various ways by esotericism, and Western esotericism has influenced Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

Artists in the literary, musical and visual fields have long been influenced by and involved with esoteric teachings and practices, some of these connections are well known, Botticelli and astrology, Mozart and Freemasonry, Yeats and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, but many remain less known or hidden, so that the extent and importance of these influences tends to have been underestimated or unrecognised.

Papers are invited which look at Western Esotericism and the Arts, from a variety of academic and practitioner disciplines. Please send an email of your abstract in two hundred words to Dr Sophia Wellbeloved sophia@gurdjieff-books.net

The registration fee must be received before speakers can be confirmed.

CONFIRMED KEYNOTE SPEAKER

Reverend Dr Malcolm Guite
Chaplain of Girton College Cambridge is both poet and priest.
see his website
http://www.malcolmguite.com/links.html

The registration fee is £30.00 for the day, includes light lunch, coffee and tea student rates available. Contact: Dr Sophia Wellbeloved at sophia@gurdjieff-books.net

The Cambridge Centre for the study of Western Esotericism is independent of any academic or esoteric communities, the co-ordinators share an interest in the need for a wider dialogue between scholars and practitioners in the field of Western Esotericism and in the establishment of a secular space in which an interdisciplinary network can thrive (see people).

IMAGE AND TRANSCRIPT OF WORDS on p.14 THE MARRIAGE OF HEAVEN AND HELL, WILLIAM BLAKE

This image has been chosen by Malcolm Guite, Keynote speaker for CCWE 2nd Annual conference Saturday 11th October, 2008. Permission to use it kindly granted by The Fitzwiliam Museum. See a transcript of Blake’s words below:

“The ancient tradition that the world will be consumed in fire at the end of six thousand years is true, as I have heard from Hell.

For the cherub with his flaming sword is hereby commanded to leave his guard at the tree of life, and when he does, the whole creation will be consumed, and appear infinite and holy whereas now it appears finite and corrupt.

This will come to pass by an unprovement of sensual enjoyment

But first the notion that man has a body as distinct from his soul is to be expunged: this I shall do by printing in the infernal method by corrosives, which in Hell are salutary and medicinal, melting apparent surfaces away, and displaying the infinite which was hid.

If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.

For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern.