Man, Temple & Text - A Defence of Rene Schwaller de Lubicz

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MAN, TEMPLE & TEXT

A Defence of Rene Schwaller de Lubicz

Being a conversation concerning the ancient Egyptian anthropocosmology and its relation to Plato's Timaeus. 

Who was Rene Schwaller de Lubicz?

He was an alchemical philosopher, an important alchemical philosopher in the XXth century. Significant for his alchemical work, which is to say his contribution to modern alchemy, but also for his work in the field of Egyptology, which is related to his alchemy. But, for all of that, his work is controversial. His work in Egyptology is generally rejected by mainstream Egyptologists, so it is we might say esoteric Egyptology, outside the mainstream. 

So his work is rejected by mainstream scholars?

It is. But mainstream scholarship, in any field, can be very narrow. You will, however, encounter people who regard Schwaller de Lubicz as an out and out crank. That sort of opinion is not uncommon. And surprisingly, some people have strong opinions about it. I am acquainted with some Egyptology people - amateurs, not academics - and they have a very hostile view of Monsieur Schwaller de Lubicz. In fact - it is remarkable - they once more or less told me that if I was interested in Schwaller de Lubicz then they were afraid I would not be welcome at their house anymore! Banned. So obviously, in Egypt circles, he can rouse passionate opinions. Quite silly, really. But it does give you a sense of how he can divide opinions. Egyptology is a contested field like that. 

Why do you think that is?

There is the mainstream scholarship. And it is very conservative and often very narrow. Certainly not very adventurous. And it conflicts with popular views of ancient Egypt, and with what we might describe as New Age views of ancient Egypt. It is one of those fields that captures the popular imagination. It is a rich theme in orientalism, Egypt. Europeans have gone through phases of obsession with ancient Egypt. And today ancient Egypt still attracts a huge and devoted following, an intense popular interest. Any exhibition concerning ancient Egypt will attract huge crowds. It has a mystique. A fascination. It is a very powerful theme, a powerfuil expression, of European orientalism.  The East fascinates. But few things in the East fascinate like Egypt. In some ways mainstream Egyptology both thrives on but also combats this fascination, because much of that scholarship is concerned with saying that nearly all popular fantasies about ancient Egypt are baseless and wrong. If you think that the ancient Egyptians were replete with mystical wisdom - a popular and very persistent view - then you will find Egyptology very disappointing. 

So Schwaller de Lubicz is in the New Age camp?

That is probably not a fair description. The New Age camp, as you call it, wants to ascribe all manner of mystical secrets to the ancient Egyptians - again, an expression of orientalism and orientalist themes - but characteristically New Age material is mushy and has no substance, no backbone. Whereas there is a school of Egyptology, usually called the 'Symbolists', who, while they share some perspectives and conclusions with the New Agers, have rather more substance to them. I think Rene Schwaller de Lubicz belongs in that camp, the Symbolists. They offer an alternative reading of ancient Egypt. 

But one rejected by mainstream scholars?

Indeed. Yet they are not dilettantes. Most of the Symbolists are scholars, of sorts, with qualifications. Doctorates. Publications. But they are outside the mainstream establishment, certainly. Schwaller de Lubicz was a scholar, and a good scholar. But he was operating in a very different paradigm to the establishment scholars of ancient Egypt. It would be wrong, all the same, to lump him in the 'New Age' category. His work deserves more respect than that. He is in the Symbolist school, the chief proponent of which, these days, is John Anthony West. West has continued the work of Schwaller de Lubicz insofar as Egypt is concerned.

How is the paradigm they are working in different to the mainstream or establishment paradigm?

Different assumptions, different methodologies. Different historical framework. West - and Schwaller de Lubicz - starts with the assumption that we should take the Egyptian's own view of themselves seriously. Mainstream scholarship is sceptical of that from the outset. So, for example, the ancient Egyptians believed that they had inherited their civilization from an earlier civilization. West, Schwaller de Lubicz, take this claim seriously. And they conclude that the evidence seems to point to that. They operate on radically different chronologies. For instance, much of their interpretation of Egyptian star lore, astral lore, is based on astronomical correlations that extend well back to dates that mainstream scholars dispute. Yet the Symbolists insist that the data, in the Temples and in the heiroglyphic records, cannot be understood properly unless we accept that much earlier dating. Consequently, nearly everything in ancient Egypt needs to be re-evaluated, in their view. And similarly, they adopt a paradigm - a very traditional view, but not a modern one - in which ancient civilization begins at its zenith - a golden age - and then goes into decline. Modern establishment scholars operate in a paradigm in which there is linear and progressive development from primitive beginnings. The Symbolists dispute that, fundamentally. So their views and methologies and assumptions part company from the outset. You'll notice that the New Age movement tends to be based in progressive narratives, not the traditional narrative of historical decline. 

Why are they called Symbolists?

Because they offer a symbolic reading of the archaeological data. And in this they claim - rightly so - that their mode of reading is consistent with that of the ancients themselves. Whereas the modern scholar, operating in the modern paradigm, is imposing a very alien way of thinking onto the data. As the Symbolists say, the Egyptians were symbolists. This is no doubt true. So the Symbolists attempt to adopt a way of thinking, a mode of thinking, a manner of investigation, that is compatible with the worldview of the Egyptians themselves, and they claim - with some justification - that modern scholarship imposes modes of thinking that are alien to and do violence to the data. The Symbolists are, if you like, phenomenologists. Their mode of study arises out of the phenomena being studied. It is phenomenology - which is a well-established method in other fields such as Religious Studies - applied to Egyptian archaeology. The mainstream Egyptologist will tell you it is unscientific. 

Is it?

It certainly yields very different results. It gives us a very different view of Egypt. And frankly, scientific or not, one would have to say that Schwaller de Lubicz's Egypt is rather closer to the Egypt of the ancient Egyptians than is that of the conventional archaeologists. We might regard it as fanciful, but in fact it is much nearer to, more faithful to the spirit of, the ancient Egyptians themselves. So perhaps our measure of what is 'scientific' is too narrow to deal with matters like this. The work of Schwaller de Lubicz, certainly, takes us into a mind-set, a worldview, that is akin to that of the ancient Egyptians, which is to say a type of symbolic mind-set. It is pioneering work in that respect, and remarkable. It is a remarkable body of work. Here I am talking about his work in Egypt. Not his alchemical work. He devoted some fifteen years to working, on site, in Egypt. To one temple, the great temple at Luxor. He published his work in a remarkable book, The Temple of Man. The outstanding key text of Symbolist readings of ancient Egypt. 

What is his main contention?

He studied the Temple of Luxor for fifteen years. He spent fifteen years at that temple. Measuring it. Studying it. Living with it. Translating its heiroglyphs. Trying to understand its symbolism. This is a remarkable feat in itself. He receives little credit for it. It is a phenomenological immersion in the subject of study. He didn't sit in some ivory tower in a university in Berlin or London. He went to the temple and he stayed there until he felt he had penetrated its mysteries. Living with it every day. That should be applauded, surely? As a methodology. His main contention, though, is that the Temple of Luxor is patterned on the human form, and hence 'The Temple of Man'. He found the patterns of human anatomy in the temple, in its art and architecture, in quite remarkable ways. And so he concluded that the Egyptians had a remarkably sophisticated understanding of the human form and encoded this into their art and architecture. And an understanding, moreover, of the human form as a spiritual form, and so a spiritual anatomy, an esoteric anatomy. At that point all the mainstream archaeologists are shouting "Bunkum!" and ridiculing his results. But his viewpoint, and his method - if not all his results - are entirely defensible, I think. 

Not all his results?

There are things in Schwaller de Lubicz's study of Luxor that are surely wrong. And much else that is highly speculative. But the general schema is not only defensible but is very likely to be right. Namely the general proposition that this temple, Luxor, is based upon analogies between microcosm and macrocosm, between the human form, the microcosm, and the macrocosmic order. These analogies encoded into mathematical proportions which are not merely utilitarian but have symbolic resonance. All of that is very likely to be close to the ancient Egyptian way of thinking. And it can still be extracted from those monuments of stone by those who approach it with a receptive mentality. 

But you don't think all of Schwaller de Lubicz's conclusions about the Temple of Luxor are correct?

Some of the articulations he makes are possibly wrong. Some of his observations and claims are stronger than others. I suspect that some of the ways he places the human anatomy upon the temple layout are amiss. But no matter. The principle is right. So Schwaller de Lubicz may be mistaken about some specifics but his general conclusions are likely to be right, in my view. And I have good reasons for thinking so. 

What reasons?

From my own studies of Plato. I am a student of Plato's cosmology. And Plato signals very clearly - at the beginning of his Timaeus dialogue, it cannot be any clearer - that his cosmology is consonant or shares a common background with that of the ancient Egyptians. But even then, there are those scholars who dispute it.

Are there? On what grounds?

When I was studying, as a post-graduate, I encountered an academic who ridiculed all that section of Plato. And ridiculed me for being so naive as to take Plato at his word. "They all say their ideas came from Egypt!" he spluttered. Egypt-Shegypt! He thought it was all rubbish. You see, there are people who are very anxious to delegitimize exactly these passages in Plato. It is important to them. Academia is full of creeps like that. But I take it that Plato is indeed signalling that this comes from, or is consonant with, the cosmology of ancient Egypt. He is very specific about it. The Timaeus is Plato's most Egyptian work. I take that as a fact. Also his most Pythagorean. And the work of Rene Schwaller de Lubicz takes us into much the same cosmology as we find in the Timaeus. So we know from the Timaeus that this way of thinking - of drawing parallels between the human body and the cosmos - is current in the ancient world, and indeed typical of ancient cosmological thinking, and there in Plato it is explicitly ascribed to the Egyptians. So it is not untoward to read Egyptology in this way. All Schwaller de Lubicz has added, really, is the proposition that this way of thinking - analogical cosmology - shaped Egyptian temples. But that, surely, is a justifiable proposition in itself. These are sacred buildings. They are not just auditoriums in which sacred things happened. The buildings, as John Anthony West says, are the sacred things themselves. The temple is the message. The idea of the temple as a sacred text, in any case, is well established. It is, for instance, the entire premise of Freemasonry. The building as a sacred text. Freemasonry looks to the Temple of Solomon, principally, but then, by extension, to ancient Egypt. That idea, that the ancients encoded their cosmology into sacred buildings, should be beyond dispute. It is just as true in Hinduism, and Buddhism, and elsewhere. So I find myself on comfortable common ground, via Plato, with Monsieur Schwaller de Lubicz. But there is more...

Yes?

More. Because, in my studies of the Timaeus I encountered the work of Reme Braque. The French scholar. He made an extraordinary observation about Plato's Timaeus. Namely that - following from statements elsewhere in Plato - he observed that the Timaeus, or the monologue of the character Timaeus, conforms to the Greek proportions of the human form. In an article, a fertile article, entitled 'The Body of the Speech'. So he proposed that there is a parallel between body and text. That is, Plato has used the human body as the blueprint for his text on cosmology. This is really quite a remarkable observation. It is speculative, but Braque makes a strong case for it. The Timaeus is divided into sections. These sections - in length - Braque argues, correspond to the established canon of proportions of the human body among the ancient Greeks. So, text and body are analogous. And more than that, text, body and cosmos are analogous. Thus the text is itself the cosmos, as it were. It is an extraordinary set of correspondences. Once again, it is absolutely in keeping with ancient ways of thinking. It makes the Timaeus a truly remarkable work. This was the subject of my doctoral work, in fact. The speaker, Timaeus, thus becomes the Demiurge who is not only describing the cosmos in his speech but is making the cosmos by his speech. And this is why the work is set on the Panathenea, the Athenian New Year. The cosmos is being remade. Then, remember, Plato connects this work directly to the ancient Egyptians who are, as he tells us, much, much older than the Greeks. "Oh Solon! You Greeks are just children!" says the Egyptian priest, famously. 

So it is similar to the analogous cosmology that Schwaller de Lubicz finds in the Temple of Luxor?

Yes. It is an example of the same type of thinking. All you have to do is extend the analogies to architecture. As it happens, Plato does not mention Luxor, but the connection with Egypt is very explicit. He points, instead, to the works of King Amasis, and to the delta city of Sais because it was a sister city of Athens. And he very explicitly draws a parallel - as did others - between the Greek goddess Athena and the Egyptian goddess Neith. Which is significant because at Luxor, in the temple at Luxor, there is iconography of Neith in what John Anthony West describes as a type of Annuciation, a prototype of the Christian Annunciation iconography.  So Neith - which is to say Athena - is an important deity in the whole scheme of the Temple of Luxor, which is a matter that could do with further investigation vis-a-vis the Platonic cosmology. Plato supplies us with that key, Athena is Neith. And the Platonic cosmology - where body equals cosmos equals text, and author/speaker equals Creator - is a cosmology of the goddess Athena, because the dialogue is set on her festival. You see, there are plenty of links here that make me sympathetic to the Egyptian work of Rene Schwaller de Lubicz. The Platonic cosmology places us in the same universe of ideas, albeit Greek, not Egyptian. 

So the Platonic cosmology can lend support to Schwaller de Lubicz's work?

Yes. But different scholars work in different paradigms. There is really little point in engaging in academic discourse with someone who is living in an entirely different intellectusal universe to you. But you might argue certain readings of Plato's cosmology - based as it is on the microcosm and macrocosm analogy - and then, by extension, lend support to Schwaller de Lubicz's radical reading of the temple at Luxor as the Temple of Man and his symbolist reading of that archaeology. Indeed, I think that the work of Schwaller de Lubicz might be deepened and in part corrected by bringing the Timaeus cosmology to it. His premise is no doubt correct. The temple as body. And the articulations of the temple corresponding to articulations of the human body. But I don't think he quite knows what model of the human body to apply to the architectural data. So he reaches for - John Anthony West does the same - models such as the Hindu chakra system. I suspect that is a mistake, in the first instance. It might be more productive to take the human body as described in the Timaeus - most of the dialogue is concerned with describing human anatomy, and it is an esoteric anatomy - and apply it to the same coordinates and structures Schwaller de Lubicz found at Luxor. It might be surprising. Let us take Plato at his word when he tells us that his cosmology of the human body is Egyptian in origin. Let us look for parallels between Plato's description of the human body, his anthropocosmos, and what Schwaller de Lubicz found at Luxor. It could be very illuminating. 

Are there scholars working on this today?

The contemporary scholar who does the greatest justice to Schwaller de Lubicz is Aaron Cheak, from New Zealand. He treats Schwaller de Lubicz with a proper degree of seriousness. He is a scholar of the alchemical traditions. And his work has rescued Schwaller de Lubicz from obscurity to some degree and is opening new avenues of study. My suggestion is to bring Plato's human anatomy to the Temple of Man. Hopefully, someone will investigate it further. There are some important conceptual frames to be applied. For example - and this is exceedingly important - we must appreciate that the human anatomy in the Timaeus is not really that of the human being as we know it. And I doubt it is at the Temple of Luxor either. 

No? What then?

This is one of the peculiarities of the anatomy sections of the Timaeus. Modern critics will state the Plato had no idea of human anatomy. But, of course, the Greeks, like the Egyptians, had explored the interior of the human body. Homer, in the battle scenes, lets us know that the Greeks understood the basic human organs. And the Egyptian's mummification would have made them entirely aware of the interior terrain of the human form. And yet in the Timaeus it is as though Plato doesn't know what the lungs do, or what the liver is. Basic things like that. The reason is that he is not really describing the human form as we know it, but rather is describing the autochthon, the plant-man, the original man. And human beings have declined from - not evolved from - that form. Which is to say Plato is describing a prototype. And, in fact, this prototype is, as it were, constructed, like a robot. The joints are pinned together. It is describing liked a machine. In order to understand it you must step aside from the idea that he is trying to describe actual human anatomy. There is a different order of ideas going on. It is a symbolist description of the human body. In fact, in the context, he is describing the first Athenians, the autochthons, the children of Athena and Hephaestos and Gea. So, for example, there are no reproductive organs, or they are added as an afterthought because animal reproduction comes later, as a falling away from the primordial form. If we imagine that Plato was trying to describe actual human anatomy then he was hopelessly, ridiculously wrong. But that is not what is happening in that text. Plato's anthropocosmology is quite different to that. And that is what we must look for in the Egyptians too. 

Autochthons?

The first generation, the prototypal man, is born from the earth, a child of the cosmos itself. With his seed from the stars. This is one of the keys to understanding the Platonic cosmology, and Plato gives us enough clues, enough signals, that such ideas came from Egypt. Yet few Egyptologists even mention this. Not even the Symbolists and Schwaller de Lubicz. It is a missing key. But we should apply that key to something like the temple at Luxor, and then we would have a fully and deeper understanding. Because, in fact, Schwaller de Lubicz brings a quite modern - and in that sense inappropriate - understanding of the human body to the ancient Temple of Man. The Symbolists often want to dazzle us with the ways the Egyptians knew points of modern medical science. This is where they tend to veer into pseudo-science and it is where they violate their own rules, namely the rule that we try to understand the ancients on their own terms. Well, a very full and complete description of the human form - its prototype, its symbolism - survives in Plato's Timaeus, his most Egyptian dialogue. Why not bring that account of the body to a study of the Temple of Man? I hasten to add that I'm not an Egyptologist and so it would be entirely beyond me, but I can identify the keys. Plato provides this key. What is needed is a full study of the theme of autochthony in ancient Egypt. And the Egyptian understanding of the body, the anthropocosmos, must be placed in that context. This is something that awaits doing. 

You mean as a continuation of the work of Schwaller de Lubicz?

Yes. He establishes some very useful principles and a methodology. It is completely at odds with the mainstream paradigm. This is why he attracts controversy and even ridicule. But the Temple of Man is a very good start. His principles are, generally, entirely at one with those who find in a text like Plato's cosmology, the Timaeus. But in other respects it might be useful to use the Timaeus as a better guide to the type of symbolism that Schwaller de Lubicz was exploring during his fifteen year sojourn in Luxor. I hope to be able to expand upon these ideas at some time, but a full study would really require another Schwaller de Lubicz and, unfortunately, one of those only comes along every century or so I think. 

Can you supply some pointers, so places to start?

I am assuming that Plato gives us the pointers. So the place to start in the Egyptian order - whereby we can extropolate from Plato's anthropocosmos to that of the Egyptians - is the goddess Neith, and therefore the symbolism of weaving. That is one place to start. To make a reexamination of the Temple of Luxor, start with the iconography of Neith and with weaving as a symbolism. The 'weaving' of the human child in the womb, or in terms of autochthony, the weaving of the autochthon in the womb of the earth. That is, no doubt, an important symbolism. And from there we enter into alchemy because the alchemical arts are the meeting of obstetrics and metallurgy. The metals as embryonic. You need to recover all of that symbolism, and that way of thinking, in order to enter into the Egyptian mind. More specifically, Schwaller de Lubicz was sort of puzzled by the absence of reproductive anatomy in his study of Luxor. He found some, but if you look at his ground plan of the temple there is nothing obvious regarding the reproductive organs. This is important. It signals autochthony. There is autochthony symbolism throughout Egyptian iconography. The scarab beetle and the snake. Both autochthonous creatures. That symbolism needs to be reconsidered. That would be a good starting point.

Schwaller de Lubicz

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Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black