The Nativity of Dante Alighieri

The nativity of Dante Alighieri is arguably one of the most elusive in all horoscopy. It was an important matter to the poet himself and he refers to it or alludes to it at several places in his work. Like all intellectuals of the period he was steeped in astrological symbolism and regarded it as a noble art. Like all well-born children of his day it is very likely that his parents had his horoscope calculated at his birth, or that he or others later calculated it from the commonly available ephermides. For all of that, however, his actual horoscope has not survived, and indeed we cannot be sure even of his date of birth. He tells us very clearly in the Paradiso that he was born under the sign of Gemini, the Twins, and there is general agreement that this was in the year 1265 (although even that has been disputed.) But Gemini extends for over a month, from mid May through to mid June, and there is no agreement as to which day in that period he might have been born. Regarding the time of day – necessary information for an accurate horoscope – there is likewise no agreement.

A search through astrological texts and websites reveals a bewildering array of possibilities. The present author has been able to collect no less that six entirely different horoscopes for Dante with dates ranging from May 14 through to June 1st and times of birth ranging from sunset through to exactly 4.33am. In none of these six cases is the proposed date and time justified or even discussed, although in several cases there is the admission that the horoscope on offer has been “rectified”. Rectification is an astrological technique whereby the astrologer works backwards from known events to a speculative horoscope. In the case of Dante, this, alas, is all we can do.

Standard rectification procedures, however, are cumbersome and, frankly, wildly hit-or-miss in practice. It is surprising that astrologers put any store in them at all since they are so notoriously unreliable. It is far better to use other clues where they are available, and in Dante’s case some are. We must still “rectify” and tweak the result and it will be necessarily speculative, but there is no need to resort to the use of so-called “transits” and other astrological devices which compound an unknown with an imponderable. We can, in the case of Dante, piece together morsels of biographical and other evidence to arrive at a nativity that can at least be justified and deemed not wildly amiss. Dante himself gives us many clues, and other writers during or just after his life give us others. It requires some detective work, but it can be done.

As it happens, and as unlikely as it seems, the time of birth in this case is somewhat easier to determine than the day of birth. This is because there is a strong tradition, going back to early biographers of the poet (and possibly to his own lifetime), that he was born with “Saturn rising”. Such a determination suggests many things, but in astrological terms it suggests that Dante had a somewhat Saturnine appearance since the rising planets (on the ascendant) account for physical demeanor. By extension, it may also indicate a Saturnine, which is to say a melancholy, disposition. This certainly accords with what we know of Signor Alighieri, including the rather Saturnine (square, austere, stern) facial features of portraits made of him during his life and afterwards.

Saturn is, in any case, very important in his horoscope since it is conjunct the Sun throughout the period in which he was born. The planet – slow moving as it is - necessarily casts a shadow over his entire horoscope regardless of upon what date we decide he was born. The tradition that Saturn was rising tells us, therefore, that he was born with Saturn in the first house or, as they say, “on the angle” which, in this case, means around or just before sunrise. Sun and saturn are conjunct. If he is born with “Saturn rising” then it is rising with the Sun.

There is a way to confirm this. While the poet only supplies broad details of his nativity in the Paradiso, he gives fuller astrological details of another occasion in the poem beginning “Io son venuto al punto de la rota” (“I have reached that point of the circuit.”) Without going into the altogether elaborate details here, it has long been noted that the astrological data in that poem is sufficent for us to actually draw up a horoscope corresponding to the event. And the event, as the poet says (and as the title of the poem suggests) is a time at which the heavens have come full circle vis-à-vis the poet. It is a poem about the sullen obstacles of winter, and it strongly implies that the poet confronts astrological conditions that are inverse to those of his nativity (Gemini being in a summer month). The title “I have reached that point of the circuit” refers to the poet reaching a point opposite to his birth. If we do not have Dante’s horoscope, then – arguably – we have a horoscope that is opposite to it. The poem, in part, says:

I have reached that point of the circuit
where the horizon, when the sun sets,
gives birth to the twin-ruled heavens,
and Love’s planet is remote from us,
because of the bright rays crossing her
slantwise, making of themselves a veil:
while the planet that solaces the frost
shows itself fully from the great arch
in which the Seven cast little shadow:

This requires interpretation at every point, certainly, but for our immediate purposes let us note that it is sunset and that “the planet that solaces frost” is Saturn and it now “shows itself fully.” When Dante was born (May/June 1265), however, Saturn was conjunct the Sun and was therefore fully obscured by the Sun’s brightness and therefore not visible. In this poem Saturn is now fully visible. From this and other details (Love’s planet – Venus -“remote from us because of the bright rays crossing us slantwise” etc) the poem can be accurately dated to December 24th 1296, the only date in Dante’s lifetime matching the astrological conditions described. In any case, if the poem describes conditions inverse of those of the poet’s own, and Saturn is visible and it is sunset, then we may surmise that at the time Dante was born Saturn was not visible and it was sunrise. Ergo, Saturn rising with the Sun.

So far so good. But on what day? There are bits and pieces of tradition regarding this but otherwise a great deal of confusion. Boccacio, for example, suggests “the latter part of May, from the notes of a peer” which is a reasonably solid reference and at least one source from Ravenna, a contemporary source, confirms that Dante told him “late May.” This is also the opinion of the reliable modern biographer Giovanni Papini (Dante Vivo) who, investigating the matter in Italian sources, says “he was born, it seems certain, at the end of May 1265 having been conceived in August 1264.” The English scholar, Edward Moore, who also addressed the question in some detail, came up with the date May 30th, or at most two or three days earlier. But there are, as already noted, a range of alternate dates backwards and forwards in time. The famous astrologer ‘Sepharial’, who was generally thorough about birth dates, writing in the British Astrology Journal in February 1919, supplies May 14th, and many other astrologers have followed this date. A. T. Mann, in the popular and influential work The Round Art, for example, gives the date of May 14, probably following Sepharial. Indeed, the Sepharial date has been the favored date among Anglo-American astrologers in modern times. However, Ellen McCaffrey, an astrologer who specialised in the horoscopes of poets, dissented and settled on May 23rd. Still others move the date into early June for whatever reasons.

Can any of these dates be confirmed in the manner of the time of birth? Turning again to the tell-tale poem Io son venuto al punto de la rota Durling & Martinez, in their study Time and the Crystal: Studies in Dante's Rime Petrose, suggest that the date that is most completely inverse to the conditions described in the poem is May 27th 1265. That is, the poem lends further weight to a date in late May which, on that basis, and for that reason, tends to firm as a likelihood.

What difference does it make? Actually, the answer to this is: surprisingly little. This is because the faster moving planets, Venus, Mercury and Mars, moved in and out of retrogradation during the period the Sun was in Gemini in 1265 and so they tended to dally around the same part of the sky. A few days, or even a week or two, in May/June 1265 will not, in fact, make a substantial difference to the positions of these bodies. The real question, therefore, comes down to Luna, the Moon, since it is the only planet that will change position in a significant way depending upon the chosen date. Luna traverses some 13 deg. or so of the sky every day and is the fastest moving body in the heavens. A difference of days in Dante’s horoscope will see the Moon move into different signs of the zodiac. By extension, the Moon’s relationship with the other bodies will change too, and so too will the all-important calculation of the Pars Fortuna (Part of Fortune) which is calculated upon the positions of Sun, Moon and Ascendant.

All things considered, this becomes a reasonable basis for rectification. Everything else is more or less settled. The question becomes: What Moon-sign best fits this person? Dante’s horoscope, finally, comes down to this. A reasonable way to proceed is to calculate the Moon’s position for the range of possible dates. The results are:

May 14h = Capricornus
May 20th = Aries
May 23rd = Gemini
May 27th = Cancer
May 30th = Virgo
June 1 = Libra

At this point, we then try to make a case for each of these positions and then try to determine which of them seems the most likely according to those arguments. Never mind about ‘transits’ and so on. A far more reasonable procedure is simply to test different dates by casting charts for those dates. As in most questions in astrology it is entirely debateable. There are questions of symbolism involved. It is a matter of judgment, not a matter of scientific calculation. In this present case, of course, we must remember that we are not dealing with a grocer or a fisherman, we are dealing with the soul who wrote the Divine Comedy and who, in that capacity, fathered the Italian language. Dante was no ordinary man and was, least of all, his own man. Rather, he was and is a man of the ages, an archetypal figure, the author of the greatest work of Christian cosmology in the European tradition. We are therefore not concerned with such questions as his day-to-day temperament as we are his place in a much larger and providential order. This requires a corresponding astrological judgment.

A strong case, it seems to the present writer, might be made for the Moon being in 1. Capricornus, 2. Gemini or 3. Cancer, and accordingly a good case can be made for eliminating the other possibilities. If in Capricornus, the Moon is then in an interesting relationship with Saturn which, as already noted, is conjunct the Sun (and Saturn rules Capricornus). If in Gemini, then the Moon joins a constellation of planets in that sign (and would have Dante born at New Moon). If in Cancer, then the Moon would be especially powerful because she rules Cancer. In all cases, though, the Moon-Saturn relationship becomes especially important here and must be a prime consideration. As far as that relationship is concerned, all manner of questions arise such as, for example, the poet’s early loss of his parents, his famous encounter with Beatrice and her role in the Divine Comedy, as well as the poet’s relationship with his homeland and patrimony, since all such matters might conceivably be under the auspices of a Luna-Saturn configuration. Which best fits the case?

Others might disagree, but it is the judgment of the present writer – given the available evidence and the nature of the case – that the Luna position that seems most likely is Moon in Cancer. It seems likely, for a start – to offer an argument from omission – that had the Moon been in Gemini and therefore conjunct both Saturn and the Sun that the poet might have alluded to this in ‘Io son venuto al punto de la rota’ or made something of it elsewhere. As a point of positive evidence, though, Moon in Cancer seems to answer better to the man’s poetic powers. The fact that he was orphaned and other biographical considerations are adequately answered by the Sun/Saturn configuration in itself. Is the Moon also swallowed up by the Sun (in Gemini) or overshadowed by Saturn (in Capricornus)? It seems more the case in such a man that the Moon is fully endowed (in Cancer) rather than muted and compromised. The tradition that Dante was born in late May is already strong; this would put the Moon in Cancer, her ruling sign, and make this one of the features of his horoscope. On the weight of evidence, this seems most likely. We opt, therefore, for a horoscope calculated for May 27th with Moon in Cancer and Saturn in the First House (on the Angle) noting again the astrological clues in 'Io son venuto al punto de la rota'. 

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

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

* * * 

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

Uzdavinys in Lahore

The author of these pages first met Algis Uzdavinys one gloomy, smog-filled evening in Lahore. The occasion was a philosophy conference, sponsored by General Musharef, and Dr Uzdavinys had arrived at the hotel late. Billed as the "new Coomaraswamy", and one of the stars of the programme, the Lithuanian scholar was lodging several rooms up from the present author who, upon being advised that he had arrived, thought it appropriate to introduce himself. He knocked upon the door and after a long delay Dr Uzdavinys, a huge hairy bear of a man, answered dressed only in his Y-fronts, his room hazy with cigarette smoke and gyrating with Arab pop music. He was gruff and jet-lagged. For some reason he felt it necessary to explain that he couldn't work without music going, at which the present author scolded him saying "That's a very bad habit" but then smiled to let him know he was joking. The Lithuanian thought about this for a long moment - and only at this point seemned to realise he was wearing nothing but his underwear - and said, "Yes. Now, where can we get some decent coffee?" The hotel coffee was dishwater. Coffee, cigarettes, Arab pop music - these, along with his books, were his essentials.

The conference was farcical. The programme was chaotic and the sound system in the auditorium failed. The organisers quickly rigged up a cheap make-shift PA and fitted speakers with microphones. When it came time for Dr Uzdavinys to speak, however, he found the microphone an impediment. He furiously ripped it from his coat and unilaterally decided to address the audience without amplification. He read his paper in his big booming Lithuanian voice - a huge man, six foot three or more - calling into the echoing spaces of the auditorium. No one could make out a word of it, but this was not the issue. The PA was so bad no one could understand any of the papers presented, but at least Dr Uzdavinys made an impression. It was a memorable performance. He had presence. Everybody knew, regardless, that whatever it was he was saying was erudite, authoritative, the work of a scholar. 

We spent the next few days touring around Lahore on foot or by taxi.  He strode through the narrow medieval streets of the old city towering above the short statured locals who stopped and stared as if he was a giant from a fairytale. Indulging his passion for cartography, he purchased a swag of maps and studied them in detail, then headed out to the various historical sites that were of interest to him. Invariably, this meant long delays sitting in taxis  in insane traffic jams, and it was on such occasions that the present author had the opportunity to discuss aspects of his work, and particularly his work on Plato and the Neoplatonic tradition. In return - sitting on the park benches watching camels and men with leashed monkeys go by and lamenting the terrible decay of what was once a beautiful cultured city - the present author shared his knowledge old roses. On one expedition Dr Uzdavinys made the astute observation that the beggars were armed with cell phones and were calling ahead of each other in a strategy to extract as much money from us as they could. 

It was in the context of these adventures that Dr Uzdavinys revealed the appalling state of the Lithuanian economy and the fact that, though a world-class scholar, his income was barely at a subsistence level. His work was constrained at every point by his comparative poverty and lack of opportunities in post-Soviet era Lithuania. Asked what Lithuania exported, he shrugged his shoulders and said "Girls." The present writer therefore determined to investigate the possibility of securing him some work in affluent Australia. This eventually transpired. A research position came up, Dr Uzdavinys applied and his application was successful. For a second time the present writer had the great fortune of spending time in his company, once more largely discussing the wider Platonic tradition of which Dr Uzdavinys had a truly encylopedic knowledge. 

Dr Uzdavinys in his office at La Trobe University, Bendigo, Australia

Alas, this sojourn to Australia - as far away from his home as can be imagined - was not a happy one for the homesick scholar (amongst other things he missed the companionship of his lovely wife, Virginia, who proofread his manuscripts and acted as his research assistant), and nor did it do much to improve his finances. Worse, the travel impacted upon his health and during a return visit to Lithuania during a Christmas break he fell sick. His solid diet of coffee, cigarettes and, even worse, Arab pop music, had taken its toll. He was diagnosed with heart disease.  He died of the same, aged forty-eight, in 2010.

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The young Uzdavinys at school in Lithuania. 

Algis Uzdavinys was extraordinarily prolific. As he told the present writer, the study of the Platonic and related traditions, and writing books on these traditions, was his vocation. Like any true scholar, he felt a strong calling to this task and he devoted himself to his books day and night. Averse to computers, he wrote in long hand, usually in Lithuanian, then translating everything into English for publication. His philosophical range was remarkable. His singular contribution was to trace and connect Platonic philosophy to ancient traditions in Egypt and the Near East and then, forwards in time, to their maturation in the Neoplatonic schools and, from there, in Sufism and other kindred traditions through to the present day. Against the usual atomizing academic tendency to emphasise differences rather than similarities (an unacknowledged side-effect of specialisation and the self-sustaining quest for academic novelty), he proposed that there is a single 'golden chain' of transmission uniting all of these schools and traditions. He remains one of the great modern exponents of this 'golden chain'. Few have done so much to help restore philosophy as a heiratic art. The Uzdavinyean position is summed up in the following quotation:

In Plato’s definition of philosophy as a training for death (Phaedo 67cd) an implicit distinction was made between philosophy and philosophical discourse. Modern Western philosophy (a rather monstrous and corrupted creature, initially shaped by late Christian theology and post-Descartesian logic) has been systematically reduced to a philosophical discourse of a single dogmatic kind, through the fatal one-sidedness of its professed secular humanistic mentality, and a crucial misunderstanding of traditional wisdom. The task of the ancient philosophers was in fact to contemplate the cosmic order and its beauty; to live in harmony with it and to tran- scend the limitations imposed by sense experience and discursive reasoning. In a word, it was through philosophy (understood as a kind of askesis) that the cultivation of the natural, ethical, civic, purificatory, theoretic, paradigmatic, and hieratic virtues (aretai) were to be practiced; and it was through this noetic vision (noesis) that the ancient philosophers tried to awaken the divine light within, and to touch the divine Intellect in the cosmos. For them, to reach apotheosis was the ultimate human end (telos). Christos Evan- geliou correctly observes that, “Neither Aristotle nor any other Pla- tonic, or genuinely Hellenic philosopher, would have approved of what the modern European man, in his greedy desire for profit, and demonic will to power, has made out of Hellenic philosophia.”

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Some of the key publications of this great modern Platonic scholar, and assorted quotations therefrom follow below:

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Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

Twin Peaks as a Gnostic Text

The widely over-rated film director David Lynch, with his annoyingly high-pitched voice and ridiculous hair-do (see here), is regularly accredited with having devised and created the cult television serial Twin Peaks - as in the phrase "David Lynch's Twin Peaks" - when in fact he had comparatively  little to do with it. He provided some initial creative guidance, wrote a few episodes and directed a few others, and at one time took cameo roles among the cast, but the qualities that have raised the series to cult status were almost entirely the work of co-creator, television writer and novelist, the much under-rated Mark Frost. This should have become plain to viewers when Lynch released his Twin Peak's prequel feature-length movie Fire Walk With Me after the television series had concluded. The movie lacked all the virtues that made the series cultish viewing. Quite rightly, it was savaged by critics, booed at Cannes and left Twin Peaks enthusiasts deeply disappointed. It revealed Lynch's interests for what they are: sordid sociology weirded up with some gratuitous surrealism. His initial contribution to the Twin Peaks series was signalled in the earlier film, Blue Velvet - beneath the thin veneer of middle-class American respectability is an ugly sociology of inter-personal violence. 

As with so much cinema this really amounts to little more than self-righteous voyeurism, and then you add some surrealism and ultra-close-ups to make it Art House. This is where Twin Peaks begins. You take a sleepy American timber-logging town and then you expose its seedier underbelly. Big deal. The homecoming Queen had a dark side. But it was Mark Frost who pushed the envelope. It was Mark Frost who took this tawdry Lynchian premise and pushed it beyond sociology into the cosmic dimension, which is precisely what makes the series interesting. No doubt Lynch contributed dream sequences and the surreality of unconscious realities imposing upon daytime normality. We are not suggesting Lynch's contribution was unimportant. But, as his novels make clear, it was Mr Frost who infused this pretentious Lynchian surreality with the structures of occultism and who thereby turned Twin Peaks, across its two seseasons, into a contemporary gnostic text.

Gnostic, in the sense it is used here, is just meant as a by-word for dualistic. It means to see the world through a dualistic lens, to see the world as an arena in which two forces compete and in doing so create the drama of life. Primarily, of course, there is the contest of good and evil, but by extension other polarities too. The present author is known to inveigh against the limitations of such a world-view in many contexts, and rightly so, but only insomuch as gnostic dualism leaves polarities unresolved. No one denies the drama, but there must be resolution. Non-dualism, in any case - the orthodox resolution proposed by Plato, Hindooism and others - is not, after all, an anti-dualism, nor even a monism. Non-dualism only proposes that dualisms are apparent but not final, though they are real enough on their own level. Let this post be testimony that this writer - for all his anti-gnostic prattle - is not unaware that the moon, in some of her phases, is both black and white.

The chief aspect that renders Twin Peaks a gnostic text, then, is its incessant preoccupation with duality. It is textured at every level with dualities and polarities drawn from arcane esoteric traditions all the way through to pop culture allusions. There are references to Tibetan Boodhism and to Madam Blavatsky all the way through to the two incarnations of the heroine, Laura Palmer/Maddy Ferguson, as the good girl/bad girl duality of the Patty Duke Show from '60s TV, and one is blonde and the other is brunette for good measure. Duality - cosmic, eschatological, moral, spiritual - is the abiding theme of the entire edifice and is signalled, of course, in the very title, Twin Peaks. For Lynch the 'twins' of the duality are the inside and the outside, the veneer and the underbelly, of small-town America, along with a Freudian interest in the secret sordidness and primal violence of seemingly civilized beings. 

Thankfully, Mark Frost amplifies this and extends it to further dimensions. He takes the dualities beyond their American particularities to the archetypal. Frost, that is, plays Jung to Lynch's Freud. If the series is textured with depth psychology rather than just a creepy psychoanalysis it is because of Frost's contribution, not that of David Lynch. Often in the cut-aways between scenes - among wind through the trees and traffic lights changing in the lonesome emptiness of night - we are presented with images of a cold half-moon. This is Mr Frost's dualist signifier. In one particularly telling case early in the second series we see, firstly, the perfect half-moon, and then we cut to the sign of the Twin Peak's diner, the Double R. We are being told that the cosmic duality of the half-moon extends all the way into the structures of human society. The name of the diner, RR, of course, is dualistic in itself - as much as the 'twin' in 'Twin Peaks' - but we are suddenly aware that its duality, its doubling, is an expression of the very structures of the cosmos. Specifically, the double R letters point to the mysterious 'Red Room' in which the otherworldly encounters take place (noting here also the allusion, among many others - Amerindians etc. - to Kubrik's horror classic 'The Shining' with its word-play on 'Red Rum', the word "murder" spelled backwards.) The ghouls of Twin Peak's demonology feed upon the pain and fear and suffering of humans. This psychic food is called 'garmonbozia' which, in its manifest form, appears like the humble down-home American fare creamed corn. The Double R, then, is the polar opposite to the Red Room. The Double R prepares meals of creamed corn to be distributed throughout the town by the Meals of Wheels service by Laura Palmer and others - the Red Room is its evil opposite, the diner of demons, where they feed on the shadow-food of 'garmonbozia'. If creamed corn is an all-American comfort food, garmonbozia is its vile, insidious shadow, its mirror image. 

We see, then, duality piled upon duality, and it finally becomes explicit in the Blavatskean device of the Black and White Lodges, two occult structures embodying good and evil, that are revealed late in the second season. There can be no doubt that this is an element added by Frost because his novels show an explicit interest in exactly this gnostic mythology. We remember, too, that Madam Blavatsky located her Black and White Lodges among the 'Secret Chiefs' and 'Ascended Masters' who reside, she claimed, in the spiritually potent nether-realms of mystic Tibet. And we realise, at that point, that the Tibetan motifs that recur throughout the television series - a wholesome interest in Lamaism that both deepens and distorts the character of Agent Cooper (even Lucy is reading a book about Tibet) - belong to Mr Frost as well. This quirkiness is all Mark Frost. 

For many casual viewers, of course, it all veered off the map and became just too weird; they were intrigued by the murder mystery and took the usual voyueristic pleasure in discovering Laura Palmer's double life, but they did not expect the soap opera genre to be taken to the places it was taken here, and large numbers of them refused to follow. Ratings crashed in the second season. The TV executives - a loathesome breed of feeble-minded scum at the best of times - insisted that the killer be revealed prematurely, and the whole enterprise limped to an ignoble conclusion. Demons, possession, mirrors. The endearing underpinning of the counter-program, soap opera within a soap opera, Invitation to Love, which had punctuated the first season was dropped through time constraints. The game of chess (with its black/white duality) never really added the further levels of symbolism it promised to do.  Mr Lynch's Fire Walk With Me - which reduced the entire thing to a grubby story about incest - was the final travesty. In the end - as gnostic text and as television - it becomes a beautiful failure. It might have been so much more. 

As well as what appeared on screen, though, the very process of production needs to be considered in all its gnostic overtones as well. It seems likely that Lynch had decided from the outset that Laura's father would be the killer - the father-as-abuser is the feminist stereotype of our times and was waiting to be exploited at the centre of the zeitgeist of the 1980s especially - but many other elements of the series unfolded over time without being preordained. Lynch's surrealist film-making instincts added some useful elements (the character Bob, it is said, emerged from an image of a set hand mistakenly appearing in a film take and Lynch liked it's serendipity) and other random factors introduced some key aspects of the final production. But Frost and his team of co-writers (sometimes but usually not including Lynch) engaged in a creative process that can only be described as supra-rational as they gave the characters and the story an inner life of its own. One of the writers, Harley Peyton, reported that speculative concerns about motive and plot were as important as the writer's intentions. He commented:

Once we made or wrote something, it was out of our hands. And the incredible amount of speculation that followed was -- and is -- in my opinion, every bit as valid as what appeared on the screen. And let me reiterate one point, the writers were often speculating right along with the audience, and in this way, many of the characters evolved into more complex creations. And sometimes, it just seemed to blossom out of nothing. We would take character names from movies we liked, join them together, and others would take those names as some kind of sign. And would then speculate and ruminate on the various implied meanings. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. But most of the time...

This is a description of a dynamic creative process suited to symbolic texts. You cannot successfully plot symbols in a deliberate fashion with ratiocinative modes. The half moon juxtaposed with the Double R diner is heavy-handed enough, but it comes in between scenes as a type of symbolic summary. For the most part it seems that the occultism of Twin Peaks unfolded through symbols and symbolic themes that were pursued, in and of themselves, in a type of 'pathworking' where even the executive producers and the screen writers do not know where they are heading. There is the sustained classical dualism of comedy/tragedy providing an encompassing structure to the whole, and all involved are bound by those structures (the comedy/tragedy structure is very primitive, after all), but otherwise the creative process itself becomes a type of shamanic undertaking. 

Agent Cooper is the shaman of the series. He moves between the worlds. (The owls - who bring the vision of day into the darkness of night - are not what they seem.) The question then becomes whether Agent Cooper was in fact lured to Twin Leaks by the Black Lodge through the device of Laura Palmer's murder? It would seem that this possibility only occured to the writers too late and that they themselves were unwitting accomplices in this design, a case where - quite unknown to them - a cigar was not just a cigar. The symbolism of wood is all-important in an occult soap opera set in a timber milling town. Josy Packard's spirit becomes trapped in a wooden drawer knob - hylomorphism of the crudest kind. (Are the writer's aware that the Greek word for matter hylo means, literally wood, and in Greek Gnostic texts carries the connotation of the evil principle opposed to spirit?) The judge warns that the woods around the town are majestic, yes, but strange. And a cooper, after all, is a man who makes vessels from wood. 

The writers of the series were also no doubt unwitting when the series ended with the ghost of Laura Palmer telling Agent Cooper that she would see him again in twenty-five years. They could not have conspired to know that twenty-five years later a third season would come into production and would air on American television in May 2017. 

 

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

Conversazioni - Having an Athens

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HAVING AN ATHENS

Being a conversation inquiring as to the importance of Athens in Platonic philosophy. 

What do you think would be required for the revitalisation of the West? Is that even possible?

There are two centres to Western civilization, and ironically - or importantly - both of them are in the east, namely Jerusalem and Athens. These are the two great cities of the "West", the sacred cities. Rome is a different matter. In some sense it is an extension of Athens, so we'll leave it out of this. Because by these two cities we are designating, of course, the Graeco-Roman heritage generally, and the Judeo-Christian heritage. The West, Western civilization, is built upon those two foundations and upon that symmetry. 

Reason and revelation?

Amongst other symmetries, yes. The vitality of the West depends upon them both, so revitalisation would require a proper reengagement with these two foundational structures, the Graeco-Roman heritage and the Judeo-Christian heritage. Is that possible? Probably not. But we fight for it all the same. Largely, it is a matter of stories. Fighting for our stories. The vitality of a civilization is its narrative, its story of itself. Post-modernist dissolution purports to do away with such narratives. Vitality is having a viable story. 

So revitalizing the West is more than just returning to its Christian roots, as some people suggest?

That type of Christian reactionary ideology is a response to the perceived threat of Mahometan immigration amongst other things. Which is understandable. But besides the Church there is also the university. The university is degraded in the West. Too little is being said about that. There is advanced intellectual decay in our universities. The Academy is cancerous. We hear about declining church attendance and other symptoms of the decay of Christianity, but too little attention is given to the decay of the Academy. Which is not a matter of declining numbers but declining standards. A revitalization of the West must include intellectual renewal as well as spiritual renewal. If that were possible. Most likely the decay has much further to go yet and renewal, or restoration, is only possible after the complete collapse of Western institutions. In any case, the tradition is built on two cities, Athens and Jerusalem - and their stories. 

Why are these two great cities of the "West" eastern? 

Orientalism is not a new phase in Western culture. Both Athens and Jerusalem are Western cities by appropriation, by an annexation of the east, by an expansion eastwards. The Romans acquire Athens under Sulla. And the aquisition of Jerusalem is the great epic of Rome that forms the substance of Christianity. Remembering that Christianity is an oriental religion. We forget that too readily. So too is the Greek tradition. It is acquired by, imitated by, the Romans. This is a deep cultural process, orientalising. And the Greeks themselves did it with the Persians. The Greeks resisted the Persians but in other respects acquired aspects of Persian culture. So there has always been this looking eastwards and bringing the East to the West. In our pivotal narratives there are two great eastern cities. Athens and Jerusalem. The vitality of a civilization depends upon having a viable story. 

A story that concerns Athens and Jerusalem and those two traditions?

Those traditions are the stories. The stories are set in those two sacred or symbolical cities. The Biblical stories. The Gospel stories, that is. But there are also the stories of Athens. To be a reader of Plato, especially, you need to become a citizen of Athens, in a sense, and participate in that city and its stories. The word 'civilization' implies city. When we ask about the vitality of civilizations, then we are asking about cities. Symbolical cities. It is not an issue of sociology. I am talking about symbolical cities. The polis as a foundational unit. It is an important symbolism. The sacred city. Jerusalem and the New Jerusalem. The city as an eschatological symbol. But Athens is such a city also. Athens is the 'city writ in heaven'. Athens is a symbolical city in the Western imagination. It is a city of the philosophical imagination and one becomes a citizen of it, occupies it, lives within its story. There is a topography of the imagination, the mind. 

What do you mean, to live within its story? How is that done?

One of the things that happened to people, Europeans,in the XXth century is that they were stripped of their stories. It is very obvious when you start reading XIXth century works. People in the past lived with a story, specifically the gospel narrative in the case of Christians. They lived with a common story. And in this sense they were citizens of Jerusalem and, by imagination, they inhabited the Holy Land. I find this fact striking about XIXth century writers. It is as if they occupy two places at once. There is their actual location, their physical location, wherever it might be, but there is also a spiritual and imaginative topography that they inhabit. And it is conspicuous that we no longer do that. 

I don't understand. What do you mean they lived in two places at once? 

People in the past - say the people who colonized Australia, settlers from England, Europe, or we might mention the Americans as settlers from England, Europe - they also lived within a Biblical topography. A topography of the imagination. The average XIXth century person spoke about Jerusalem and Nazareth, and the well in Samaria, and the River Jordan and the road to Damascus as if these were real places to them, although places of the imagination. They lived in those places spiritually. The gospel stories were living realities and they knew those places. So they lived in the 'life world' as the sociologist calls it, but also in a story world. I read accounts of, say, gold miners who travelled to southern Australia in the 1850s. The gold rushes. There they are at the far end of the earth, but in their writings - diaries and so on - they also live in a Biblical world. That is to say they still live within the gospel story. Jerusalem is not just a city in the Near East, it is a city of the mind, the spirit, the imagination. Americans did this too, often through the motif of the Promised Land. America as a Biblical land. Which was, in fact, lacking in the Australian experience. But it was a strong force in American settlement. Most evident in the Mormons, of course. Which is one reason I take an interest in Mormonism. 

And we have lost that? Have we lost the capacity to do it, or is it just that religious faith has declined? 

You can still meet Christians with this sense of story. This is something conspicuous about Christians, or certain Christians anyway. They live within a story. Quite apart from factors such as 'faith' or 'belief'. They have a story. They are people with a narrative. Their lives are framed by a narrative. The gospel is not ancient history to them. It is current. And the religious life is richer for this. This is an obvious way in which religion enriches a person's life. It installs a story, a grand narrative, into their life, or places their life in a greater narrative.  For the Mahometan, he lives in the age of the Prophet. He knows that world. It is a very strong impulse in Mahometanism, to keep alive the sense of the Prophet's age and world and to retain that story. They occupy that story. They live in it. They copy it as a paradigm. The religious life is a life of stories. But so too is the philosophical life. Athens is a city of stories too. The Graeco-Roman heritage is a heritage of stories. And the principle story, the central story, is the story of Socrates. The avatars of the West are Jesus and Socrates. The great cities are Jerusalem and Athens. It's an important symmetry. 

And we are supplied with the story of Socrates by Plato?

Yes, and it is Plato who sanctifies Athens. In the Republic we are given a description of the ideal city, the city of the philosopher kings. This is an idealised Athens. Too few commentators note this. The city of the Republic is Athens. This fact becomes very clear in other Platonic dialogues too, such as the preface to the Timaeus. The city state, the polis, described by Socrates in the Republic is Athens, an Athens redeemed. Throughout the dialogues we encounter decadent Athens. But in the Republic we are given an ideal view of the city of Athena, the goddess Athena. And we are told that it is a city 'writ in heaven', a celestial city. Sacred Athens. So the Platonic tradition gives us Socrates - and it is an idealised Socrates, not quite the historical Socrates - and he occupies an idealised Athens. The philosopher's task is to become a citizen of that city. To have an Athens. We are told this in the Republic too. We are told that, in whatever age, the philosopher may become a citizen of that great celestial city, the city of philosopher-kings and of justice. This is what becoming a philosopher, in the Platonic sense, entails. It means to become a citizen of this celestial Athens. 

So the revitalization of the Academy would entail returning to Plato? Putting the story of Socrates at the centre of our intellectual culture again? 

There is no age as anti-Platonic as ours. Especially the second half of the XXth century. The complete denial that there are fixed realities. The descent into relatvism in the modern West is anti-Platonic. So intellectual renewal means a new engagement with the Platonic tradition. I take the view that the greatest periods of the West are when the Platonic intellectual tradition is strongest. Plato is the Athenian, par excellence. Or at least Socrates is. The story of Socrates is dramatized in the dialogues of Plato, and the backdrop of the drama is classical Athens. And so classical Athens becomes a fixture - an enduring place - in the Western intellectual imagination. In the practice of Platonic philosophy we become citizens of the celestial Athens. And followers of Socrates. Fellow citizens with Socrates, the greatest of the Athenians. 

Through an act of imagination?

It is a specific texturing of the imaginative life. It is an important and necessary part of engaging in Platonic philosophy. Importantly, we do not come to it through history. History is a hardening. The narrative must be fresh and flexible and must live in the imagination. There is no direct value in the historical Socrates. Plato very deliberately crafts a particular portrait of Socrates in the dialogues and it is not the Socrates of history. Similarly, we are not concerned with historic Athens. Rather, like the case of Socrates, we view the historic Athens through a certain constructed lens. It is an idealised Athens. An Athens of archetypes. Athens as the Form of the city, just Plato's Socrates is the ideal philosopher, the Form of the philosopher, in history. Profane history extinguishes the imagination. The proper engagement with Plato's Athens is essentially imaginative, and imaginal, to use the Corbinian term. 

Jerusalem is still a sacred city. Is it true that Athens has only an historical significance now, compared to Jerusalem?

Christianity is vociferous. Loud. And it remains at the heart of Western civilisation, whereas in the XXth century Athens has gone into decline. Even more so than Christianity. In the XIXth century - think of the English public schools, schools that trained intellectuals for the entire British Empire - it was more common to live in the story of Athens. The classical education - learning Latin and Greek. Studying the classics. In the British classical education, you could live in close company with Socrates and Aristophanes and all the Athenians of that generation, classical Athens. The educated gentleman in the British Empire, even if he was in the Punjab or Singapore or Hong Kong or New South Wales, he lived, intellectually, in ancient Athens as well. To be educated was, in a sense, becoming a citizen of ancient Athens. Since then that ideal of the classical education has collapsed. Christians might still occupy Jerusalem - as a mental and spiritual space - but few intellectuals occupy ancient Athens in that way anymore. We live in an age in which the classics, the Graeco-Roman heritage, has been dislodged from the centre of the culture. In that sense it is a very Christian age in the West today. Christo-Islamic tensions fills the whole space. Jerusalem is pivotal, intense. Athens not so. 

What are the steps to becoming such a citizen?

In the first instance it is just a dwelling of spirit. And we dwell there by becoming engaged with the dialogues of Plato. Which have a providential quality in the West. They are like intellectual scripture. We shouldn't pit reason and revelation against each other in a false polarity. The story of Socrates is sacred too. Enter into the story. Socrates, wisest and most just. He is, of course, a horrid little man - an anti-hero as much as a hero. That is the nature of it. But you become a citizen of Athens by engaging with the story of Socrates. Metaphorically, you are in Athens, tagging along, following Socrates - this horrid little barefoot man - around the Agora. It is an intellectual positioning. It means to become philosophical, in the Platonic sense. We follow old Socrates around the streets of Athens, puzzled by his arguments, amused or outraged by his antics. 

So it is merely a matter of reading Plato? 

We might read a bit of background history, or we might study maps, archeology, and learn Greek, read other Athenians, the Athenian drama, but just by reading the dialogues we develop a sense of the city, and that is the sense that needs to be fostered. It is the same with the gospels. There is a world presented in the gospels. It is not the same world as the world of the Biblical historian or the archeologist. It is, instead, lit by the light of an imaginative reading. And so we let this happen with the dialogues of Plato. When we enter the dialogues we enter the company of Socrates and we enter Athens. This is a very deliberate feature of the dialogues of Plato, but rarely appreciated. All the dialogues - the Laws is an exception, the Phaedrus to some extent, but only just - are set in Athens. Plato is very particular about this. His Socrates never - or rarely - ventures outside the city. Why has Plato done this? He constructs and maintains a very specific narrative space, and that space is Athens. It is a general rule: when you are reading Plato you are in Athens. So in that sense the city is always present, always the backdrop for Plato's philosophical dramas. This is one of the first facts about Plato. The dialogues are set in the city and, moreover, many of the dialogues are about the city. 

Many of the dialogues are set on specific historical events, aren't they? Doesn't it help to understand the historical context?

History and historicity in Plato is a complex matter, and deliberately so. What is history and what is myth? What is logos and what is muthos? No other writer, in any age, is as capable of walking the fine line between history and myth as does Plato. Plato never indulges in outright fictions. Except perhaps in the Menexenus, which is an interesting case. But generally if an event didn't happen, then he is  careful to make sure it might have happened. Did young Socrates meet old Parmenides? Probably not. And yet Plato has made it, written it, so that such a meeting might have taken place. And it might have. 

Did it?

We cannot be sure. Which is the point here. Plato very deliberately leaves us in a space between fact and fiction. We can never be sure just what is historical in Plato, and he is very deliberate about this. We should ask why? Because he purposefully avoids an ossified sense of history. In the dialogues he presents us with reasoned philosophy side by side with cosmic myths. Philosophy involves both. Platonic philosophy is derived from both. History, profane history, will harden our sense of reality. Plato keeps it moist with mythology. It is a deadening process to try to read Plato through its historical context. Everything about a Platonic dialogue discourages us from doing that. They may be anchored in history - because Plato does not indulge in baseless fictions - but they are essentially supra-historical. And our sense of Athens - the city of the philosophers - must be supra-historical too. Based in history, but essentially supra-historical. 

So, between history and myth? Between fact and fiction?

Plato is very careful to build up a sense of Athens that is between history and myth. It is the historical city seen through philosophical eyes, and in the Platonic sense this means seeing the city as recollection. The objects of the world serve to remind us of their ideal models. So Athens, in Plato - and the characters in Plato - are types, archetypes. Or at least they shine with an archetypal light, they shimmer with their perfection. Athens itself is a symbol. Objects are symbols. They point to some other reality. This is the sense in which it is "idealised". When the Platonic philosopher looks at an object, he sees its ideal, its perfection. There is the duality of copy and model, but there is a borderland between them. That duality is not final. This is the "imaginal" realm. Plato's dialogues take place in an "imaginal" Athens, if you like. The reader has to breathe that air. To read Plato right is to be sensitive to this borderland, the tension between real and ideal, history and myth, logos and muthos. Plato keeps us, holds us, in that suspension. Too much history will reduce the city to ruins. 

What do you mean?

Historical readings reduce Plato to museum pieces. It requires a deconstruction of Plato's historical fictions. But it involves ignoring or explaining away the fact that Plato dances with history. The proper spirit of it is to acknowledge the dance and to join it. But people like to say, "Plato says such-and-such, but the historical facts were xyz." That is not philosophy. It is textual archaeology. Instead of that, you have to find the pulse of it. And it is somewhere between reason and revelation. We can witness various approaches in some orientalist paintings of the XIXth century. In some, the artist is just recording what he sees. These are artists who have travelled east, to Athens, which was then under the rule of the Turks. In other cases the artist has an archaeological interest. But in others the artist catches a glimpse of the ideal city, is moved to envisage the ideal city. These are very interesting records. It is a case of Europeans rediscovering Athens. 

Athens was under the Ottomans? When was this? 

In the late XVIIIth and early XIXth centuries. And then into the XIXth century. There is the interesting phenomenon of Europeans rediscovering Athens. Through orientalist eyes. Not an intellectual rediscovery, but through a journey. Athens had been severed from Europe and is under the Ottomans. Orientalist depictions of Athens in the XIXth century are fascinating, because we see Europeans rediscovering this sacred city which, of course, is in ruins and is occupied by the Turks. You can see the ruins or you can see beyond it to the celestial city and acknowledge - remember - the place of the city in the soul of the West. There are journeys east that are journeys into the past, and also in an important sense journeys into the self. The same is true of Jerusalem, whether in the Crusades or later. Jerusalem is a city in physical reality, but it is also a city of the imagination and the spirit. And likewise Athens. When European travellers, orientalists, ventured into Ottoman Greece to find Athens it was a journey over land but also through time and also into the European spirit. Athens is not just any city. It is at the heart of Western identity. So the records of European travellers going there - especially when it was under the Ottomans - are especially interesting. Some only see ruins. 

Who does that? What are examples?

Some painters who arrive in Athens in that period record the ruins. Such as Carl Rottman who reached Athens in the mid 1830s. (See below.) We see an arid landscape more or less faithfully recorded and the Acropolis in ruins. This is an historical view, obviously. It is interesting but only as an historical record. It tells us about Athens at that time. 

But its only interest is historical because it is confined to that period?

There are a great many such paintings and drawings. Historical. The Western artist wants to record an historical moment. Edward Dodwel, the Irish artist, published a famous collection called Views of Greece, which are very lovely. Largely, the orientalists were very accurate in their drawings, especially of architectural features and other features that they might want to duplicate, reproduce. Some artists were neoclassicts and were involved in recovering details, drawings, to be applied in neoclassical projects back home. In some cases, though, - more interesting - there is a sadness to the ruination. Paul Spangenberg later in the century depicts Athens in desolation. The once sublime city has been lain to waste. (See below.)

Yes, he presents it as a desert. Very different to Athens today!

These type of paintings are always a measure of just how much things have changed in the course of the XXth century. We all know what Athens is like today! Just over a century ago it was a desolation. Emptiness. Spangenberg's painting is not merely reportage, though. There is a melancholy. This is the great city of the philosophers reduced to ruins by the ravages of time. Others had different interests. Turner, for instance, as always, was interested in light; not the least bit interested in architecture. He's a landscape painter, although he does capture the 'air' of the site and that is important. Not even a landscape painter but an air painter. It is not just a metaphor: to breathe the air of Athens. The modern city is hopelessly polluted, and you would not want to breathe the air! In ancient times - this is based, I think, on a reference in the Timaeus-Critias ensemble of Plato - it was believed that the air of Athens was responsible for her many philosophers. Turner is interested in the air of the city. (See below.) 

How is the air of Athens responsible for the philosophers?

There is a reference in the Timaeus - Plato's great cosmological dialogue, one of the keys to Plato. It mentions, or implies, that the quality of the air in Athens is conductive to philosophy, and this is why Athens is famous for giving birth to philosophers. It is not a reference that modern readers are in a position to fully understand. Although a painter like Turner helps us. We tend to homogenize matters. But in fact there are subtle differences of quality in the air in certain places. Air is not just air. Just as soil differs in one place to another, so too does the air. Actually, soil and work work together as a single system, but that is another matter... Plato might just as well said that the soil of Athens, the soil of Attica, produces good philosophers. He says the air does. A painter like Turner tries to capture the subtle differences in the air and light, atmosphere, in different places. As an artist he is sensitive to exactly that. In his painting - he visited Athens - he tries to capture the air of the place. He paints a scene of a military skirmish, but it is insignificant and incidental in the context of the painting. Turner is interested in the air. In ancient times the air of Athens was famous. The air, the atmosphere, of philosophers.

So you mean the air is - or was - conducive to philosophy?

Yes. Although there is a deeper significance. It is not really the time to go into it here, but the goddess Athena - the patroness of the city - is an air goddess. There is an esoteric significance to that. It is not what Mr Turner is about, though. But when the ancients said that the air of the place was fit for philosophers they were alluding to Athena as an air goddess, a goddess of the air. Although Ruskin writes a book about it in the XIXth century, so perhaps it was not entirely remote from Turner, after all. To discuss it would lead us into esoteric matters about the goddess Athena. Instead, all we need to say is that the philosophers breathes the air of ancient Athens. And yes, that is a matter of the imagination, the intellectual or spiritual imagination. We say it metaphorically - to breathe the air of ancient Athens - meaning to live in that world, imbibe its atmosphere. Actually, it has a deeper significance that has to do with Athena. When we are in Athens we are under the gaze of Athena. Ruskin writes a beautiful little book called 'Queen of the Air'. Possibly Turner's landscapes and seascapes are informed by the same understandings Ruskin records in that little book and that he acknowledges is a power of Athena. 

So what artists paint an idealised Athens? 

The best examples are the paintings of the German artist Leo von Klenze. Those are the most celebrated examples. He journeyed to Athens but rather than recording the ruins there, or just the landscape,he was moved to re-imagine the ancient city. But not as an archaeologist might. (See below.)

You see, in the late 1830s the Ottomans were expelled from the city and a German, Otto, became its first king after independence. Von Klenze, a court architect, was invited to Athens to assist with restoration projects and projects for public buildings. 

So the Germans - who have such a rich philosophical tradition - had this connection to Greece? 

We forget this connection between Germany and Athens. It is important to German romanticism. Perhaps the Germans don't forget it, but the rest of us do. The Germans took possession of Athens after the Turks. It is important to the Germanic sense of continuing the Greek philosophical tradition. The connections between the Germans and Athens - and the Greek philosophical tradition, and the Greek current into European culture - are rich and important. The feminine archetype, Athena, the goddess of the city - as a feminine archetype - is rooted in the northern soul of Europe. In southern Europe it is the Virgin Mary. This is a dichotomy that underpins something of the Reformation, essentially a northern/southern sundering. 

So there are two cities, two avatars - Christ and Socrates - and there are two feminine archetypes or Forms, as well? 

A further symmetry. There is Mary. Jerusalem. And Athena. Athens. The Greek tradition, the connections to Athens, are richer in the north, in Germany as it happens. This also meant that German orientalists had access to Athens. Von Klenze took employment there. So he had to re-imagine the city and in this he produced pictures of the idealised city, ancient Athens in her golden age. These are not archeological renderings, though; these are architectural visions. This is the Athens of legend. And this is the Athens that we want. This is the same Athens that we find in Plato's dialogues. This is Athens - city of philosophers. So this is the Athens with which philosophy should be concerned. Historians and archaeologists can fuss about other versions of Athens, but the philosopher should make himself at home in the Athens of the philosophers. Socrates' Athens. Plato's Athens. This is the Athens that Von Klenze imagines. Note that it is not one of those precise historical reconstructions. These days, with 3D animation and technology, we have scale models of ancient Athens and you can navigate around in the city.

Virtual reality. Like in a computer game? 

Like in a computer game. We don't need that.

No?

It goes too far. It is like the difference between erotica and pornography, if you like. A wit once said that the only difference is in the lighting, but the real difference is in imagination. As they say, pornography "leaves nothing to the imagination", whereas we very definitely and very deliberately do want to leave something to the imagination. The ideal is not the super-real. In modern art, there is the movement or the style called the super-real, super-realism. It is a mode of painting that tries to out-perform the camera. But that is not the "ideal". It does not try to capture the essence or the Form. The super-real, virtual reality, has a deadening effect upon the imagination. Whereas the whole task here is to foster an imaginative sense. Much as a book does. A novel creates a mental picture of places and people. Very different from a movie. You are much better to read the gospels than to watch Mel Gibson's Passion of Christ which is pornographic in its realism. In any case, Von Klenze - his paintings are idealised, an idealised rendering of ancient Athens, not virtual reality. He is a beautiful painter, Von Klenze. An architect but also one of the great orientalist painters from Germany. When he went to Athens in the first half of the XIXth century he gave us a vision of its classical ideal. 

So we enter the Athens of the imagination?

Or the imaginal. The oriental city of true philosophy. If the West is to be revitalized it is necessary to make that journey again. There are cities of the imagination. Athens is one of them. To journey again to the garden of the philosophers in Athens. That is another important painting in this respect. It is by the Hungarian, Strohmayer. Antal Strohmayer. Who also journied to Athens and instead of painting what he saw with his physical eyes he reimagined the Athens of the philosophers in the painting 'The Garden of the Philosophers', in 1834. (See below.) Of course, needless to say, historical Athens almost certainly never looked like that. Which is entirely beside the point. Strohmayer paints the Athens of the philosophical imagination. This is a location in the European soul. Today, we live in an age where the Academy, the university, as an institution, is dangerously debased. It is now the realm of the soulless technocrat and of the relativist and of the post-modernist who knows no greater virtue than sheer power. Christianity is compromised and confused, certainly, and the Church is in a sorry state, but the university is in a state of even deeper decay. What has been lost is the garden of the philosophers, in Athens. The imaginal Athens. This is the Athens that needs to be rediscovered, as a cultural, civilizational project, but first as the personal project of anyone interested in Platonic philosophy.  

Which is in a worse state, the Church or the university?

The university. Although in recent times we have seen the virtual collapse of Protestantism. There is hardly anything of value left in Protestantism. And in any case, these institutions overlap. The disease that has beset the universities is largely a disguised Calvinism. The Catholic Church has her problems, of course, and yet the Eastern Orthodox churches are in a healthier state. Even after eighty years of the Soviets the Russian Church is very healthy. But the Academy is in advanced decay almost everywhere. Very little is being done about it. The garden of the philosophers has been turned into a wasteland. People who are concerned with cultural decline, and so are also concerned with cultural renewal, they are aware of the spiritual problems in Christianity. But the West - and this is my key point here - is and has always been a mixture of Jerusalem and Athens. Christianity was never able to fully Christianize the occidental soul. And this is a matter of providence. The pagan spirit was never fully subdued, and the greatness of the West, and the greatest epochs of Western civilization, always drew upon Athens and Jerusalem. So any revival of the fortunes of the West - which you'd have to regard as unlikely anyway at this time - must include a renewal of the spirit of Athens. A return to Christianity will not suffice. You will hear it said that a renewal of the West must consist of a return to Christianity. I am more concerned about a return to Athens. 

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Yours,

Harper