The Square Earth: Astrology, Vedic & Otherwise

Much to her credit, Mother India remains one of the few places on Earth where astrology (to be carefully distinguished from astronomy) is still regarded as a legitimate academic discipline and where Universities still retain entire departments devoted to this traditional science. It has long since disappeared from the Western Academy and been relegated to the status of fringe science. In India it continues to have a serious place in intellectual life as well as in the daily life of honest Indians.

This fact sends the nation’s leftist intelligentsia – largely made up, as elsewhere, of Marxist atheists - into paroxyms of rage, and they have long campaigned in the court system and through other means to expel the astrologers from the academy. It has fallen to so-called “right-wing” political groups and much-loathed “New Hitlers” like Prime Minister Modi to defend astrology (and aryavedic medicine and other traditional sciences besides) as an important part of the nation’s Hindoo heritage.

This political alignment is not much appreciated in the West. There the situation is somewhat different. Astrology is largely the hobby of ‘New Age’ leftist liberals congregating in inner urban coffee shops, while so-called “conservatives” (actually just crony capitalists) tend to champion the hard sciences and the rationalist and utilitarian outlook of the Enlightenment which they construe as the ‘Western Tradition’. It is a topsy-turvy alignment. In the West the residues of the traditional sciences find a home among the mushy genderless feel-good New Agers and progressive trendies; in India, more correctly, they are defended by the reactionaries, the old anti-modernist nationalists against the young tradition-hating intellectual elite. 

As the present writer has witnessed, it drives the latter party to distraction when and where these misalignments meet, such as when young backpacking hippies from Europe travel to places like Benares (which is, by the way, the parliamentary constituency and political stronghold of Prime Minister Modi) to take courses in ‘Vedic’ (or ‘Jyotish’) astrology. Don’t they realize that their Indian counterparts – university educated urban-based young people – associate astrology with the old order and such evils as arranged marriages? Why do these young Europeans – with their bright purple dhotis and Bob Marley tee-shirts, their lesbian relationships and ‘One World’ ideology – indulge all of this traditional rot? Don’t they understand that things like astrology are exactly what progressive young Indians hate and want gone? It is amusing. Two cultures at cross-purposes.

* * *

During his extended stay in traditional Benares the present author was fortunate to discuss ‘Vedic’ astrology with several of its local practitioners. It is, of course, a very complex matter, and so only the absolute basics were canvassed, but even so it was enough to give him some sense of it. The first and most compelling thing about it from his point of view, was that this astrology, unlike that now current in the West, has not itself been infected by the unwarranted distortions and unintelligent innovations of modernity: it is, indeed, still largely traditional. In northern India, though, this means – ironically – that it still preserves the essential features of the Hellenistic astrological tradition that was carried to India by Alexander and also by the Muslim invasions. 

‘Vedic’ astrology, that is, is hardly very Vedic – it is, rather, a Graeco-Islamic astrology that has been naturalized into the older Indian systems. In this respect it is a parallel case to so-called ‘Unani’ medicine which is, in fact, Graeco-Islamic (Gallenic/Hellenic) medicine which has been naturalized to northern India and survives there long after it has died out and been anathemized in the West. The author had suspected as much. His encounter with ‘Vedic’ astrology in Benares confirmed it entirely. When one strips away the Hindoo names and other Hindooizing features, ‘Vedic’ astrology – at least in the north of India, since the south is somewhat different in its history – is largely an Hellenic astrology and as such recognizably akin to familiar Western astrology before the latter was modernized into its present form.

The differences are important. Vedic astrology reminds us of what Western astrology was like before it was reconstructed by such people as Alan Leo in the XIXth century. The present author, it should be disclosed here, is no great enthusiast of contemporary astrology in the West, and regards it as decadent in several important respects. He was thus very happy to encounter a more integral Western astrology – albeit dressed up as ‘Vedic’ - in contemporary India.

Two elements of modern Western astrology are missing in its Vedic cousin: the use of the round chart, and the use of the modern trans-Saturnian planets. These are the chief elements added to Western astrology by modernizers and that served to sever it from its older expressions and that, as far as this writer is concerned, violated some of the science’s most integral symbolism. All astrology degenerates into superstition. This is certainly so in India, as anywhere else, but modern Western astrology is deviationist in an even more fundamental sense. Modernizers (such as Alan Leo) tampered unintelligently with its most basic constituent parts, its most important symbols, and accordingly turned it into a superstition proper. More than any other innovations, the round chart – as opposed to the square – and the new planets – as opposed to the ancient seven – have made modern Western astrology a nonsense. By comparison – happily - Vedic astrology is still intact.

* * * 

There is insufficient space to detail here all the ways in which these innovations have brought Western astrology to ruin. Suffice to say that the present author is an astrological traditionalist – a purist even - and in particular subscribes to the astrology – as a science of symbols – inherited by the Platonic tradition, and especially as found preserved in the writings of one Julius Firmicus Maternus. As such he looks down with disdain upon deviations from this heritage as outright abominations. And, inasmuch as he ever engages in the astrological arts, he still uses the square chart and still confines himself to the ancient planets seven, just as do the Vedic practitioners. These features have a cogent and integral symbolism that is indispensable in the scheme of things. To depart from either is to fall into heresy pure and simple.

The most compelling defense of the both the square chart and the seven planets – and rebuttal of the round variant and the new planets – is that the traditional arrangement is founded in the solid evidence of direct human experience. One can see the traditional seven planets with the naked eye, that is to say, whereas the modern trans-Saturnians planets (how many of these are there these days? The astronomers cannot agree) are abstractions only accessible through a telescope. The traditional cosmology is human scale. And similarly, the square chart corresponds to direct human perception, since it divides the sub-lunary realm into four quadrants and emphasizes four facts, namely the points of “culmination” in the movements of the heavenly bodies. If human beings – and astrologers – had not stopped observing the heavens every night this fact would not require any explanation. Yet it does.

“Culmination” is an obvious fact to the naked eye. We see it very clearly when the moon rises in the east. Often it will appear above the eastern horizon as huge in size. Often too the setting sun will appear to be huge on the western horizon. Indeed, the points of rising and setting, magnify astral phenomena. Similarly, when the sun is at its zenith its heat is fiercest and when the moon is at its zenith its light is brightest. These too are points of culmination. There are four such points: east, west, above, below. In these four places – according to all traditional astrological understandings – heavenly bodies and their influences upon mundane affairs are at their strongest. These are called the ‘cardinal houses’. The square chart of the heavens used in traditional astrology illustrates this. At a glance, in the square chart, one can see this most important feature of the heavens: what planets occupy the ‘cardinal houses’, what planets are rising, setting or culminating. The round chart used by modern Western astrologers obscures this emphasis. It treats space and spatial angles as homogenous. Thereupon it opens astrology to a wealth of misunderstandings and symbolic errors. As if the various ‘houses’ are equal in importance and strength! Only someone who does not really appreciate to what visual realities the astrological chart corresponds could entertain such a basic fallacy. In traditional astrology the earth is, if not flat, then at least square. 

The four angles of culmination.

The four angular or cardinal houses. Planets found in these locations are said to be "on the angles".

An intelligent and symbolically coherent astrology, therefore – and one that remains human scale and so embodies rather than violates the correspondence between micro and macrocosms, surely a desideratum of any astrology whatsoever! – will retain the use of the square chart and will shy away from the reckless use of heavenly bodies that cannot be observed by the unaided human eye and are only known to egg-heads sitting at radiotelescopes in the Rocky Mountains. Such was Hellenic astrology, and the astrology of the Saracens, and that of medieval Europe, and such is the closely related astrology of India today. 

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

Charles, Churchill and Hitler: Three Painters

According to numerous syndicated news reports in recent times, the current best-selling painter in the United Kingdom is none other than His Royal Highness, Charles, Prince of Wales. The Prince is an enthusiastic and prolific amateur watercolorist, and lithograph reproductions of his paintings have been on sale for some time. They sell well. He donates the money made from the sales to charity. It is estimated that every year he sells something in the order of two million pounds worth of paintings. 

Their popularity, however, is not matched by critical acclaim. Critics have been almost uniformly unkind in their appraisal of his work, with one noted critic describing them as “laughable”. Others are less savage and merely denounce them as “torpor-inducingly conventional.” The London gallery which displays his work is more positive; the curator describes his paintings as “charming works in the British watercolor tradition”. Below are several of the paintings in question:

Much as the present writer is an unabashed apologist for the Prince in nearly all the fields to which His Royal Highness devotes himself – from his advocacy for organic gardening to his contempt for modernist eyesores in urban architecture – he is, all the same, not so keen for the Prince’s artwork and for once feels compelled to side with the critics. 

Many posts ago on this blog he gave a somewhat positive response to the paintings of another unlikely amateur painter, George W. Bush, (see here). As it happens, he has no love of the man as a public figure, but he does admit some charm to his paintings. In the case of Prince Charles, it is the other way around; he has much love for the man but does not find many redeeming qualities in the paintings. They are, perhaps, “charming” additions to the “British watercolor tradition” but they are also, as the critics rightly say, dull in their conventionality and lacking in insight, imagination and flair. There is nothing quirky in them to make them interesting. At best, they are competent and skilled, but the selection of subject matter and viewpoint is conventional in the worst sense. Here below are several more to demonstrate:

Alas, His Royal Highness is not a great painter. 

His paintings deserve comparison with those of other British artists in the same tradition, and the artist that springs most to mind is Winston Churchill. Mr. Churchill took up painting as a relaxing pastime during World War II, and continued painting for the rest of his life. His work is certainly much better than that of the Prince of Wales. In fact, he might really have become a painter of note had he found the time to devote all his energies to it. Unlike those of the Prince of Wales, there is nothing pedestrian or deadly dull about Churchill’s works. They often fail for being too conventional as well, but others are refreshing and vibrant and manage to surprise. He is a better observer, as well as more skilful with color and brush. Below are some of Mr. Churchill's better works:

As readers can see, Churchill was a considerable talent. His paintings of scenes in Morocco, Egypt and other orientalist subjects are particular favorites of this present writer:

These paintings, it must be said, have everything that is lacking in those of the Prince of Wales. There is depth, engagement, intimacy, imagination and a distinct viewpoint matched by keen observation. Churchill makes a genuine personal contribution to British painting. Those of the Prince, regardless of how well they sell, are flaccid, dull, mere imitations of much better works in that same tradition, postcard reproductions. They are not, for all of that, bad. They are probably much better than many people might have expected. But they are ordinary and undistinguished, whereas the paintings of Mr. Churchill – the better ones at least – manage to rise above those categories and become artworks of real interest and character. 

The paintings of Mr. Churchill, in turn, invite comparison with those of yet another famous amateur, the German Chancellor, Herr Adolf Hitler. Hitler had pretensions to become a professional artist early in his life and was passionate about both painting and architecture. It is even reported that as late as 1939 he remarked, "I'm am artist, not a politician. As soon as this matter of Poland is settled I'm going back to art." Those of his paintings which survived the War now fetch very high prices among a certain circle of conoscenti. He was, in fact, a more technically sound painter than either Charles or Churchill, as the following examples illustrate:

There is no gainsaying the fact that he was quite a good painter (a much better painter than a military strategist!) He shows the sensibility of an architect, whereas Prince Charles - for all his love of traditional architecture and his well-known horror of modernist buildings - shows no such sensitivity in his paintings. Churchill's paintings show a more intimate sensibility, most evident in his interiors. Herr Hitler is primarily interested in buildings. Accordingly - as we well know - he was a man of large projects. He shows a sensitivity to things solid and concrete - Germanic order. Mr. Churchill was a man more sensitive to situations, atmosphere, ambiance. Charles, unfortunately, shows neither trait, and although his paintings are not technically poor and they may be loved by the Mums and Dads of England they are empty of force and vision.

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

The Vision of Mr. and Mrs. Yeats

Mr. and Mrs. W. B. Yeats

One evening in the declining years of the XIXth century, at the London lodge of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a famous duel took place. Tensions and mutual animosity between two key members of the Order had finally exploded into armed combat and an actual sword fight – with real swords – broke out on the staircase. One of the members, clad in a kilt and full highland regalia, was Aleister Crowley – a dangerously unstable individual – and the other was the neatly dressed, bespectacled and generally mild-mannered Anglo-Irish poet William Butler Yeats. The two men loathed each other with a passion and clashed whenever they met. On this occasion they actually took to each other seeking blood until other members interrupted and persuaded them to drop their weapons. There was no love lost. Crowley went on to slander Yeats at every opportunity for the rest of his life, and Yeats responded in kind.

As it happens, history has been much kinder to Mr. Yeats. He has a well-deserved reputation as one of the finest poets of the English language in the modern era. His poetic powers grew in strength as he grew older. His later poems are sublime. In contrast, Mr. Crowley is more infamous than famous and – quite contrary to his own estimation of his poetic skills – is regarded by all but a few drug-addled cultists in West Coast USA as a tiresome writer of stale doggerel and some really loathsome pornographic verse. Yeats was once kind enough to admit that Crowley had written perhaps three good lines of poetry in his lifetime but when prompted he declined to say what they were.

Several posts ago, the present writer made mention of an expose of Mr. Crowley’s so-called “holy book”, Liber Al vel Legis. See here. It has been shown that Crowley’s account of the reception of this supposed sacred tome from a supernatural agent named ‘Aiwaz’ is almost entirely a baseless fiction and that, in fact, this ‘Book of the Law’ began its life as an experiment in the art of automatic writing. That is, Crowley composed the work himself, albeit in a mild trance state which is the modus operandi of automatic writing. To wit, the writer surrenders conscious involvement. They write without thinking. Whether from their own unconscious mind or, as they might suppose, from some hither ‘spirit world’ or other, words overflow onto the paper in a type of low-level mediumship similar to what happens in a spiritualist séance. Crowley elevated an item of his automatic writing into an Aeon-making revelation and backfitted a suitable ‘reception myth’ to it in order to pass it off as holy writ. We now know that this was largely a case of fraud.

But Mr. Yeats also experimented with automatic writing, and he too drew upon it in order to construct his own mythos – but without any attempt to turn it into a new religion with himself as the Prophet of Horus. In his case, he took a large body of automatic writing compiled over years and worked it into what he called his System (with an upper case S), a complex corpus of esoteric lore that he subsequently used as inspiration for his poetry. He published this ‘System’ – which occupied him for over two decades - in two editions of a book called ‘A Vision’. It is a key to his poetry, even though his poems stand on their own and need not be explicated through their occult background.

Just as his poetry is some of the best written in the XXth century, ‘A Vision’ is a brilliant synthesis of occult themes in the Western Tradition and one of the most important works of occult philosophy in modern times. It came about through the mediumship of Mr. Yeats’ young wife, Georgie. As she later admitted, she faked the automatic writing at first in order to sooth the heart of her new husband, but she sincerely claimed that, after a while, some manner of ‘communication’ took place through her and with her husband prompting her with questions a vast system (or System) of esoterica flowed from her whilst subdued in a trance. Mr. Yeats collected the hundreds of pages of automatic writing that this random process yielded and painstakingly extracted from it a coherent, organized, profound philosophy of symbols. He used Georgie’s mutterings and scribbles to construct his own poetic mythology, much as William Blake had done before him. Both he and Mrs. Yeats believed that the writings had come from some nameless otherworldly ‘Instructor’ although both admitted that they might just as well have surfaced from the depths of the unconscious mind. Either way, it was inspired.

The present writer, it must be admitted here, is a lifelong enthusiast for Yeats’ ‘System’ and returns to it on a regular basis. Framed against the great schema of the Platonic Year and replete with the symbolism of alchemy, at its centre is a symbolic arrangement of the twenty-eight phases of the moon. Each phase represents a human type, or an earthly incarnation. In Yeats’ ‘System’ a soul progresses through the twenty-eight phases in a complicated marriage of solar and lunar ‘tinctures’ amidst the turning ‘gyres’ of the cosmos. It is, in fact, to this arrangement that the very title of this web log ‘Out of Phase’ alludes, if readers have not already gathered. The purpose of this post is to alert readers to the same, and to celebrate the ‘System’ of Mr. and Mrs. Yeats as the work of symbolic genius that it is, regardless of whatever process, psychological or otherworldly, brought it to birth. 

These days one hears much about Mr. Gurdjieff’s ‘Enneagram’ types, and of course much more about the traditional astrological types in their modern form – the Lunar Phases of the Yeats’ System deserve greater study still. Literary critics and fans of Mr. Yeats’ poetry are very often perplexed by the occultism of ‘A Vision’ and hardly know what to make of it. The present writer would like to see it more widely known and acknowledged in ‘occult’ and related ‘fringe’ circles – a key work in occidental esoterica. Certainly, it is a far more important and fruitful work than anything that came from the toxic and demented ego-driven pen of the ithyphallic Aleister Crowley.

In the first edition of ‘A Vision’ Yeats explained the origins of the ‘System’ through the device of several short stories. They relate how a certain character named Michael Robartes journeyed eastwards and encountered a group of Arabic Soofis who taught him the secrets of the Mansions of the Moon. Thus, Mr. Yeats confessed the orientalist themes of his lunar ‘System’. Despite being an Irish nationalist immersed in indigenous Celtic mythology, he was an orientalist by nature, adapting Celtic myths to the conventions of Japanese No theatre, for instance, and producing renderings of the Hindoo scriptures, amongst other oriental projects. Like all Western occultism – this being the thesis of the present writer and a constant theme of this blog – the Vision of Mr. and Mrs. Yeats’ making has its roots in the alchemy and astrology of the Saracens, and in the cosmology of Plato (itself considered as ‘oriental’ in this case.) Mr. Yeats concocted the tale of the adventures of Michael Robartes at the insistence of Mrs. Yeats who wanted her role in the project kept out of public purview. In the second edition of ‘A Vision’ however, the truth was told, although Georgie Yeats remained reticent and shy about the whole business throughout her life and wanted to take no credit for it. But in fact, she was the muse of the poet, and it should be said without equivocation that it was to her mediumship – if not to her more conscious participation – that we owe not only the ‘System’ but also Yeats’ finest poems.

In the diagram below we see a summary of the phases of the moon according to Yeats’ very complex system of cosmological and spiritual mechanisms. A key point to grasp is that the types ascribed to the phases do not correspond to the phases of the moon indicated in the astrological horoscope of a given person. This is a common error. Even many of Yeats’ occultish friends laboured long and hard to link the phases to horoscopes. But the otherworldly ‘Instructor’ in the automatic writing sessions was emphatic on this point. When Mr. Yeats asked again how these lunar types correspond to horoscopes, he was told (via Georgie) that they do not. When he asked one more time, the ‘Instructor’ was uncompromising. There is no correspondence, the Instructor said, and don’t ask again! The phases describe sequences of incarnations through a ‘Great Year’ of time, not moon types in common astrology. Just because the moon was at a certain phase at your birth has no direct relation to this scheme.

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

Notes on Plato's Parmenides

By common agreement the dialogue entitled Parmenides is the most profoundly perplexing work in the Platonic corpus. It presents a situation in which the ageing sage, Parmenides, visits Athens and engages in discourse with a very young Socrates. Chronologically, according to conventional dates, this meeting was just barely possible, although it is almost certain that the encounter as Plato presents it is a fiction. All the same, as usual, we should note carefully Plato concern for verisimilitude. He does not engage in idle or baseless fictions. He very deliberately wants to raise the question in the reader’s mind as to whether or not this meeting really did take place. It seems not, but then again, maybe it did…

The dialogue has confounded readers throughout the centuries and has given rise to the most diverse interpretations. The present writer (in his academic guide) has himself indulged in this and has an interpretation of his own – one radically different to those commonly peddled in philosophical circles. His interpretation is based on two peculiarities of the work.

First, Plato has based the dialogue upon the festival of the Panathenea, the great festival of Athena. In this, the author notes, it forms a pair with the dialogue called the Timaeus. The author then supposes that this setting is significant and that the two dialogues, Parmenides and Timaeus, concern matters relevant to that festival. He therefore reads the two works together as a pair. This indeed was a common practice in the ancient world because the ancients considered the Parmenides Plato’s premier metaphysical world and as such it complements the Timaeus, his work on phusis. The present author goes further. He reads both works in the light of the mythological background of the Panathenaeic festival.

Second, he notes a few peculiar signals (clues) in the text which are generally ignored and treated as mere padding. In particular, there are some tell-tale references to a young character named Antiphon. We are told that he has learnt the whole of Parmenides’ speech by heart, yet he is now busy shoeing horses. Imagine: the one person in the dialogue who has fully internalized the teachings of Parmenides has retired to attend to the most menial of tasks. The present author is strongly of the view that there are no accidental details in a Platonic dialogue. These details, therefore, are of significance and are part of the dialogue for a very good reason. Moreover, concerning horses, we encounter a strange mixed metaphor in the text: horses and ships. This, to the present author, and in this mythological context, points to the god Poseidon. Poseidon and Athena: these dialogues concern this mythological pairing.

The author’s notes on the Parmenides are presented below. Since the Parmenides is the most dense and most wordy and most difficult of dialogues, he offers his interpretation in cartoon form:

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

Some Guidelines for Reading the Divine Plato

The author is often asked how one should approach the works of Plato. Where to begin? The following notes were prepared for that purpose: some guidelines for reading the Divine Plato.

Platonic philosophy is a different undertaking to other forms of philosophy. The works of Plato offer a “jnana yoga”, an intellectual path of attainment. Philosophy (philo + sophia), in Plato, is a higher wisdom and should not be confused with “philosophy” in the modern profane sense. Platonic philosophy is a sacred activity. Plato should be read in this spirit. If not, the study will be fruitless. 

The works of Plato are so masterful they could only have been written by a man of supreme intellectual and spiritual attainment. This is the demonstrable fact that qualifies Plato for the ancient title ‘Divine’ or ‘God-like’ – ho theios Platon – and for the belief that his works are divinely inspired. The works of Plato should be approached with this in view. Their author was a master, a saint, a prophet. They are inspired works.

The object of the Platonic path is the ‘Vision of the One and the Good’. The proper purpose for reading Plato is the pursuit of this end. It is attained through reflection on the very nature of thought itself.

The deity presiding over the works of Plato, and over philosophy (properly understood as a Wisdom Tradition) is Athena, the patron goddess of Athens (‘Neith’ of the Egyptians). Plato is a representative of her city and of her tradition. His teachings and his writings expound sacred traditions, both inner and outer, of this goddess. Note that most of the dialogues are set in Athens – her city – and that Socrates is very reluctant to ever leave Athens. Plato’s Academy was located in an olive grove sacred to Athena. Athena looms in the background of the entire Platonic enterprise. When reading Plato, make Athena your guiding spirit.

For the most part the works of Plato take the form of philosophical dialogues, usually with Socrates conversing with various interlocutors. Modern readers are not accustomed to reading dialogues. Reading dialogues requires a certain skill – just as reading a play is different to reading an essay. You must become accustomed to the dialogue form, hearing the several voices in conversation and giving each speaker, and each viewpoint, its proper turn.

The historical Socrates, it is believed, wrote nothing. In the dialogues Socrates (Plato’s Socrates) voices a deep suspicion of the written word. The dialogue form accommodates this; it is a form of writing that approximates living speech. In the dialogues we encounter the paradox: Plato doesn’t like writing yet is himself a master of it. The dialogues should be read with this in mind. They are not fixed texts. They are designed to undermine their own authority as written text. The text is fluid. Never let the text ossify into a Bible-like ‘scripture’. That is not their nature.

The dialogues are full of play. Plato writes in a form of high playfulness, a divine playfulness. Readers need to enter into this spirit of play – it is the single-most important key to reading the dialogues aright.

At the centre of the dialogues is the tragedy of the death of Socrates, but the dialogues are comedies as well as tragedies. There are jokes on nearly every page. Be sensitive to the play of these jokes and to the tension between tragedy and comedy.

The dialogues are literary creations. As well as being works of philosophy, they are works of literature. They ought to be approached primarily as philosophical dramas and thus as works of art.

The dialogues are works of fiction, not reportage. All the same, there is a profound tension between fact and fiction at their heart. There are no fictional characters in the dialogues and every situation and encounter depicted might have happened even if, as is most likely, it didn’t. This tension between fact and fiction, history and myth, is itself a central concern of the dialogues and the dialogues themselves are a lesson in exactly that tension. The dialogues, that is, demonstrate this Platonic theme.

In the dialogues the city-state of Athens is an archetypal, eternal city and its citizens are archetypes more than they are historical figures. Readers should resist all attempts to overly historicize the dialogues and to reduce the characters of the dialogues to historical figures. Like Plato’s Socrates himself, though based on historical figures, they are idealized forms.

Plato was a dramatic and lyric poet and superb writer of unsurpassed literary skill. His Greek is the best Greek (outside of Homer.) If you are reading the dialogues in translation, be aware that they are works of great tonal beauty, often with hymnic, liturgical and dramatic qualities that are lost in translation. It helps to gain some acquaintance with Plato’s (Attic) Greek or at least to hear portions read in the original.

Do not assume that Socrates, or anyone else, speaks for Plato himself in the dialogues. Plato never appears or speaks in the dialogues. His absence and carefully crafted anonymity is itself part of his sanctity. The ‘Divine Plato’ is removed from the dialogues themselves. The question of how much Socrates speaks for Plato is known as the ‘Socratic Problem’ – it is a deliberate feature of the dialogues. Do not be too concerned with it since it is a problem without a resolution and was intended to be such.

We are not sure how the dialogues were used by Plato or by his students, or even why they were written. What was their purpose? We do not know. Do not assume that they were in any way “textbooks’ or ‘handbooks’ for Plato’s students. More likely they were puzzles, challenges, and designed to stimulate and guide more than to instruct.

Every dialogue is open-ended. Usually nothing is resolved. In general, the dialogues are more exercises on how to think rather than expositions on what to think.

The dialogues are internally inconsistent and contradictory. A point of view offered in one dialogue may be undermined and countered or refuted or modified in another. Do not expect consistency. The dialogues are not treatises that relate a single viewpoint and Plato was not a systemizer.

The dialogues are supremely artful. There is nothing in them that is accidental. Give particular attention to everything in them that strikes you as peculiar and unusual. Every word, every device, every turn of narrative, has its reason. It is intellectually (and often spiritually) constructive to contemplate those aspects of the dialogues that seem difficult to explain. 

Socrates is the master. You are supposed to fall in love with him. Love his love of argument. Love his love of Truth. Love his intellectual fearlessness. Love, in particular, the paradox: Socrates was the ugliest of men but had the most beautiful soul.

When reading the dialogues it helps to hear the voice of Socrates: nasal, high-pitched, whining and irritating. He may speak sweet words but he does not have a sweet voice.

Socrates speaks in an ironic tone. Throughout the dialogues there is a pervading undercurrent of ‘Socratic irony’. When is Socrates being serious and when is he being ironic? When is he testing your credulity? When is he pulling your leg? Be sensitive to Socratic irony.

Throughout the dialogues Socrates is always warning us about the deceptive nature of arguments that persuade yet are not true. Be sensitive to this trap, including – or especially – when considering the words of Socrates himself. Socrates may be “wisest and most just” but he is also supremely cunning, a trickster.

It is best to follow the ancient and accepted canon of Plato’s works and ignore the squabbles of modern critics as to what was and was not actually written by Plato. In the ancient canon there were thirty-five dialogues, plus the Letters, thus thirty-six works in all.

As a coherent reading programme, read the dialogues in their traditional Tetralogies (sets of four), of which there are nine (9 x 4 = 36). Each Tetralogy (set) is regarded as being like a set of Athenian plays, which consisted of three dramas plus a comedy. It is constructive to consider the dialogues in this manner and after this model, at least as a starting point.

The usual place to start reading the dialogues is with those that relate the trial and death of Socrates, i.e. the Apology and the Phaedo. Note this fact well. We begin at the end. The dialogue in which Socrates is youngest, the Parmenides, is usually the last or one of the last dialogues to be read in the sequence. Ask: why this reverse chronology? Why has Plato done this? Why are we reading backwards in time?

Do not become distracted by modern speculation about the order in which the dialogues were written. In particular, the fond idea that the so-called ‘Socratic’ dialogues are “early” and those in which Socrates plays a lesser role or does not appear at all are “late” is not an especially helpful framework. Resist this sort of modern chronological reading.

Do not read the dialogues through the lens of the life of Plato. Extant biographies of Plato were written centuries after he died. In fact, we know very little for sure about him. He has deliberately made himself absent from the dialogues, so do not try to insert him on the basis of late and unreliable biographies.

Be aware that the dialogues do not stand alone. They are interconnected, either according to the traditional Tetralogy groupings, or according to other internal connections and allusions, according to theme, speakers or other factors. Noting and following these interconnections and cross-allusions is an important part of reading the dialogues in depth. 

Ancient readers nominated two works, the Parmenides and the Timaeus, as the central dialogues. The Parmenides, they thought, offers Plato’s metaphysics and the Timeaus offers his cosmology. This is a useful systemization. These two works are no doubt very important in the totality of the Platonic dialogues and should be given due attention as such.

It is commonly agreed by both ancient and modern readers that the masterwork among the dialogues is the Republic. It deserves appropriate study. Make the Republic the centerpiece of your reading. 

As well as constituting a “jnana yoga” in themselves, several Platonic dialogues – such as the Phaedrus and the Symposium - set out a spiritual path of love. It is in these dialogues that Platonism meets many later (Semitic) spiritual traditions such as Christianity and Sufism. These dialogues, which set out the doctrines of so-called ‘Platonic Love’, are highly esteemed for this reason and deserve particular attention. Socrates is a lover. In Plato – as in the person of Socrates – the path of the intellect and the path of love, nous and eros, converge. 

Give particular attention to the setting and location of a dialogue, if it is given. If it is, it is very important. On what festival in the Athenian calendar does it take place? That is a key. At which time of the year? Where and when? It is important, for instance, if a dialogue takes place within Athens or outside of Athens. 

The central doctrine of the dialogues – the so-called Theory of Forms – is nowhere stated outright. Rather, it forms a general trend in Socrates’ thought. But note well that the entire ‘theory’ is apparently demolished in the dialogue called the Parmenides, demonstrating that – although it is not at all obvious in other dialogues – Plato was fully cognizant of the shortcomings in and objections to the ‘theory’. And note that, although counted as a late dialogue, the Parmenides is the earliest in Socrates’ biographical chronology. We are to understand, then, that Parmenides demolished Socrates’ theory when Socrates was a young man and so the later dialogues, it follows, show him struggling with the theory in the shadow of that early rebuttal. The dialogue called the Parmenides – the most difficult of all the dialogues – is very important for this reason. It recontextualizes all the other dialogues. 

In many, if not all, dialogues there may be a hidden or ‘esoteric’ dimension or at least several layers of meaning to be discovered by diligent students. There are surface-level readings and deeper ‘initiated’ readings. The dialogues reward rereading and deep reflection even on matters that may seem straightforward.

In many dialogues Socrates, or other characters, often speak of myths as having a lesser status than rational thought, yet the dialogues are full of myths which often seem central to their meaning. The tension between muthos and logos is a central concern of the dialogues and the dialogues themselves illustrate this tension. Give particular attention to the Platonic myths and consider them in relation to the rational arguments that appear alongside them. The myths concern an ‘esoteric’ dimension of the dialogues. 

Plato includes various puzzles and riddles in the dialogues, usually of a mathematical nature. These are very important. They concern an ‘esoteric’ dimension of the dialogues.

Resist reading the ‘Introductions’ that accompany modern translations of Plato. Let Plato’s works speak for themselves.

Never read Plato through Aristotle. Aristotle is said to have been a student of Plato, but he is one of the worst and most unreliable commentators on Plato. Ignore Aristotle.

Yours

Harper McAlpine Black

First Fleet

View of Botany Bay

On the 26th of January every year the good people of Australia – a category that does not encompass a small elite of spoilt, resentful, university-educated post-colonial inner-urban New Left ratbags and their media whores, popularly referred to as 'Leftards' - celebrate the foundation of the British colony at Port Jackson, New South Wales, which is properly counted as the foundation of the nation. The so-called First Fleet, consisting of eleven ships, had made the long and hazardous journey from England, via Rio de Janero, at the command of the Crown with express permission to establish a penal colony at the site – known as Botany Bay - previously discovered and declared a British possession by Captain James Cook decades earlier. Cook, however, had overlooked a better port a few miles north of Botany Bay, subsequently called Port Jackson, and it was there that the First Fleet, led by Governor Philip, settled. The actual location of the settlement – landing there on January 26 - is not far from the current Sydney Opera House on the banks of Sydney Harbor which is distinguished as one of the finest and most beautiful deep water harbors in the world.

The rationale for the settlement was that Britiain had of recent times lost its access to the American colonies following the revolt of the French-funded rabble who had framed themselves as freedom fighters against the Crown. Bitten by that loss, the British turned to the Antipodes – a land at the very ends of the earth – in order to start again. From the outset, that is, Australia was a type of counter-America, the new America of the south. The stated reason for the colony was to act as a prison for miscreants, and the First Fleet included hundreds of convicts sentenced to exile, but in fact the convict population was to act as a cheap labour force used to build a British military and trading station on the shores of the wide Pacific, an important new link in the Empire.

As it turned it, Australia, Australia Felix – previously known as New Holland and then as New South Wales (because its eastern coastline bears a striking resemblance to a certain area of coastline in northern Wales) – became Britian’s most successful colonial venture, and remains so to this day. America has gone on to become a bloated ugly uncouth sprawling nuclear-armed temple to usury – the only country in history, as Oscar Wilde was once to observe, that went “from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between” – while rough-hewn square-jawed Australia is a sunny paradise of the south: stable, prosperous, peaceful, clean and uncomplicated, with a national character that is laconic, reticent, self-effacing, droll and refreshingly free of any self-important nonsense. 

The great unacknowledged treasure of the country is its constitution, a humble act of British Parliament enacted in 1900 which laid the foundations for a remarkably stable and effective system of government which is based on the British system and retains the British monarch as Head of State but which also includes the best features of the American experiment, such as an elected Senate as a House of Review. If the abovementioned New Left scum can be held at bay, this very fine system – one of the wisest written constitutions of modern times - will remain intact and deliver good government to the Commonwealth of Australia throughout the coming century. One of the great virtues of this constitution is that it is almost impossibly difficult to change. One of the nation's Prime Minister's, Menzies, once described making changes to the document as "one of the labours of Hercules" (a classical allusion lost on today's crop of Political Science graduates.)

The story of the First Fleet has been told many times and is rehearsed anew every January 26. There is no need to catalogue the bravery and daring of those mariners who sailed to the farthest and most remote unknown corners of the globe in tiny crowded vessels so as to found a new outpost in a hostile environment and the most unforgiving of circumstances. In our age of air travel we can hardly appreciate what 12,000 miles of seafaring was like in those times. But we do have, thankfully, numerous journals and first-hand accounts written by those intrepid people on board those ships, along with accounts of their first impressions of the new land, vivid accounts that bring that great adventure of European civilization back to life for us today. 

Readers can find some of those accounts listed in the links below along with the account of Mr. Watkin Tench, who undertook the journey, on the early transfer of the new colony from Botany Bay to Port Jackson. Readers are urged not to dally with the self-loathing narratives of low life journalists like John Pilger who casts the First Fleet as cabal of colonialist criminals and cowards. Instead, have some integrity; read the first-hand accounts yourself.

GOVERNOR PHILIP’S JOURNAL

The journal of the leader of the expedition and first Governor of New South Wales, Governor Philips:

http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks/e00101.txt


ARTHUR BOWES SMYTH

A Journal of a Voyage from Portsmouth to New South Wales and China - in the Lady Penrhyn, Merchantman - William Cropton Sever, Commander by Arthur Bowes, Smyth, Surgeon - 1787-1788-1789

http://acms.sl.nsw.gov.au/_transcript/2007/D00007/a1085.html

DAVID COLLINS

An Account of the English Colony of NSW Vol 1.

http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks/e00010.html


RALPH CLARK

Journal kept on the Friendship during a voyage to Botany Bay and Norfolk Island; and on the Gorgon returning to England, 9 March 1787 – 31 December 1787, 1 January 1788 – 10 March 1788, 15 February 1790 – 2 January 1791, 25 January 1791 – 17 June 1792 by Ralph Clark

WILLIAM BRADLEY

A Voyage to New South Wales by William Bradley

http://acms.sl.nsw.gov.au/_transcript/2007/D00007/a138.html


JOHN HUNTER

Journal kept on board the Sirius during a voyage to New South Wales, May 1787 – March 1791 by John Hunter

http://acms.sl.nsw.gov.au/_transcript/2007/D00007/a1518.html


JOHN EASTY

Pt Jno Easty A Memorandum of the Transa() of a Voiage (sic) from England to Botany Bay in The Scarborough transport Captn Marshall Commander kept by me your humble Servan() John Easty marine wich (sic) began 1787 by John Easty

http://acms.sl.nsw.gov.au/_transcript/2007/D00007/a1145.html

PHILIP GIDLEY KING

Remarks & Journal kept on the Expedition to form a Colony ... by Philip Gidley King

http://acms.sl.nsw.gov.au/_transcript/2007/D00007/a1519.html


JOHN WHITE

Journal of a Voyage to New South Wales by John White

http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0301531.txt


WATKIN TENCH

A Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay

http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks/e00083.html

* * * 

CHAPTER VIII.

From the Fleet's Arrival at Botany Bay to the Evacuation of it; and taking Possession of Port Jackson. Interviews with the Natives; and an Account of the Country about Botany Bay.

We had scarcely bid each other welcome on our arrival, when an expedition up the Bay was undertaken by the Governor and Lieutenant-Governor, in order to explore the nature of the country, and fix on a spot to begin our operations upon. None, however, which could be deemed very eligible, being discovered, his Excellency proceeded in a boat to examine the opening, to which Mr. Cook had given the name of Port Jackson, on an idea that a shelter for shipping within it might be found. The boat returned on the evening of the 23rd, with such an account of the harbour and advantages attending the place, that it was determined the evacuation of Botany Bay should commence the next morning.

In consequence of this decision, the few seamen and marines who had been landed from the squadron, were instantly reimbarked, and every preparation made to bid adieu to a port which had so long been the subject of our conversation; which but three days before we had entered with so many sentiments of satisfaction; and in which, as we had believed, so many of our future hours were to be passed. The thoughts of removal banished sleep, so that I rose at the first dawn of the morning. But judge of my surprize on hearing from a serjeant, who ran down almost breathless to the cabin where I was dressing, that a ship was seen off the harbour's mouth. At first I only laughed, but knowing the man who spoke to me to be of great veracity, and hearing him repeat his information, I flew upon deck, on which I had barely set my foot, when the cry of "another sail" struck on my astonished ear.

Confounded by a thousand ideas which arose in my mind in an instant, I sprang upon the barricado and plainly descried two ships of considerable size, standing in for the mouth of the Bay. By this time the alarm had become general, and every one appeared lost in conjecture. Now they were Dutchmen sent to dispossess us, and the moment after storeships from England, with supplies for the settlement. The improbabilities which attended both these conclusions, were sunk in the agitation of the moment. It was by Governor Phillip, that this mystery was at length unravelled, and the cause of the alarm pronounced to be two French ships, which, it was now recollected, were on a voyage of discovery in the southern hemisphere. Thus were our doubts cleared up, and our apprehensions banished; it was, however, judged expedient to postpone our removal to Port Jackson, until a complete confirmation of our conjectures could be procured.

Had the sea breeze set in, the strange ships would have been at anchor in the Bay by eight o'clock in the morning, but the wind blowing out, they were driven by a strong lee current to the southward of the port. On the following day they re-appeared in their former situation, and a boat was sent to them, with a lieutenant of the navy in her, to offer assistance, and point out the necessary marks for entering the harbour. In the course of the day the officer returned, and brought intelligence that the ships were the Boussole and Astrolabe, sent out by order of the King of France, and under the command of Monsieur De Perrouse. The astonishment of the French at seeing us, had not equalled that we had experienced, for it appeared, that in the course of their voyage they had touched at Kamschatka, and by that means learnt that our expedition was in contemplation. They dropped anchor the next morning, just as we had got under weigh to work out of the Bay, so that for the present nothing more than salutations could pass between us.

Before I quit Botany Bay, I shall relate the observations we were enabled to make during our short stay there; as well as those which our subsequent visits to it from Port Jackson enabled us to complete.

The Bay is very open, and greatly exposed to the fury of the S.E. winds, which, when they blow, cause a heavy and dangerous swell. It is of prodigious extent, the principal arm, which takes a S.W. direction, being not less, including its windings, than twenty four miles from the capes which form the entrance, according to the report of the French officers, who took uncommon pains to survey it. At the distance of a league from the harbour's mouth is a bar, on which at low water, not more than fifteen feet are to be found. Within this bar, for many miles up the S.W. arm, is a haven, equal in every respect to any hitherto known, and in which any number of ships might anchor, secured from all winds. The country around far exceeds in richness of soil that about Cape Banks and Point Solander, though unfortunately they resemble each other in one respect, a scarcity of fresh water.

We found the natives tolerably numerous as we advanced up the river, and even at the harbour's mouth we had reason to conclude the country more populous than Mr. Cook thought it. For on the Supply's arrival in the Bay on the 18th of the month, they were assembled on the beach of the south shore, to the number of not less than forty persons, shouting and making many uncouth signs and gestures. This appearance whetted curiosity to its utmost, but as prudence forbade a few people to venture wantonly among so great a number, and a party of only six men was observed on the north shore, the Governor immediately proceeded to land on that side, in order to take possession of his new territory, and bring about an intercourse between its old and new masters. The boat in which his Excellency was, rowed up the harbour, close to the land, for some distance; the Indians keeping pace with her on the beach. At last an officer in the boat made signs of a want of water, which it was judged would indicate his wish of landing. The natives directly comprehended what he wanted, and pointed to a spot where water could be procured; on which the boat was immediately pushed in, and a landing took place. As on the event of this meeting might depend so much of our future tranquillity, every delicacy on our side was requisite. The Indians, though timorous, shewed no signs of resentment at the Governor's going on shore; an interview commenced, in which the conduct of both parties pleased each other so much, that the strangers returned to their ships with a much better opinion of the natives than they had landed with; and the latter seemed highly entertained with their new acquaintance, from whom they condescended to accept of a looking glass, some beads, and other toys.

Owing to the lateness of our arrival, it was not my good fortune to go on shore until three days after this had happened, when I went with a party to the south side of the harbour, and had scarcely landed five minutes, when we were met by a dozen Indians, naked as at the moment of their birth, walking along the beach. Eager to come to a conference, and yet afraid of giving offence, we advanced with caution towards them, nor would they, at first approach nearer to us than the distance of some paces. Both parties were armed; yet an attack seemed as unlikely on their part, as we knew it to be on our own.

I had at this time a little boy, of not more than seven years of age, in my hand. The child seemed to attract their attention very much, for they frequently pointed to him and spoke to each other; and as he was not frightened, I advanced with him towards them, at the same time baring his bosom and, shewing the whiteness of the skin. On the cloaths being removed, they gave a loud exclamation, and one of the party, an old man, with a long beard, hideously ugly, came close to us. I bade my little charge not to be afraid, and introduced him to the acquaintance of this uncouth personage. The Indian, with great gentleness, laid his hand on the child's hat, and afterwards felt his cloaths, muttering to himself all the while. I found it necessary, however, by this time to send away the child, as such a close connection rather alarmed him; and in this, as the conclusion verified, I gave no offence to the old gentleman. Indeed it was but putting ourselves on a par with them, as I had observed from the first, that some youths of their own, though considerably older than the one with us, were, kept back by the grown people.

Several more now came up, to whom, we made various presents, but our toys seemed not to be regarded as very valuable; nor would they for a long time make any returns to them, though before we parted, a large club, with a head almost sufficient to fell an ox, was obtained in exchange for a looking-glass. These people seemed at a loss to know (probably from our want of beards) of what sex we were, which having understood, they burst into the most immoderate fits of laughter, talking to each other at the same time with such rapidity and vociferation as I had never before heard. After nearly an hour's conversation by signs and gestures, they repeated several times the word whurra, which signifies, begone, and walked away from us to the head of the Bay.

The natives being departed, we set out to observe the country, which, on inspection, rather disappointed our hopes, being invariably sandy and unpromising for the purposes of cultivation, though the trees and grass flourish in great luxuriancy. Close to us was the spring at which Mr. Cook watered, but we did not think the water very excellent, nor did it run freely. In the evening we returned on board, not greatly pleased with the latter part of our discoveries, as it indicated an increase of those difficulties, which before seemed sufficiently numerous.

Between this and our departure we had several more interviews with the natives, which ended in so friendly a manner, that we began to entertain strong hopes of bringing about a connection with them. Our first object was to win their affections, and our next to convince them of the superiority we possessed: for without the latter, the former we knew would be of little importance.

An officer one day prevailed on one of them to place a target, made of bark, against a tree, which he fired at with a pistol, at the distance of some paces. The Indians, though terrified at the report, did not run away, but their astonishment exceeded their alarm, on looking at the shield which the ball had perforated. As this produced a little shyness, the officer, to dissipate their fears and remove their jealousy, whistled the air of Malbrooke, which they appeared highly charmed with, and imitated him with equal pleasure and readiness. I cannot help remarking here, what I was afterwards told by Monsieur De Perrouse, that the natives of California, and throughout all the islands of the Pacific Ocean, and in short wherever he had been, seemed equally touched and delighted with this little plaintive air.

CHAPTER IX.

The taking Possession of Port Jackson, with the Disembarkation of the Marines and Convicts.

Our passage to Port Jackson took up but few hours, and those were spent far from unpleasantly. The evening was bright, and the prospect before us such as might justify sanguine expectation. Having passed between the capes which form its entrance, we found ourselves in a port superior, in extent and excellency, to all we had seen before. We continued to run up the harbour about four miles, in a westerly direction, enjoying the luxuriant prospect of its shores, covered with trees to the water's edge, among which many of the Indians were frequently seen, till we arrived at a small snug cove on the southern side, on whose banks the plan of our operations was destined to commence.

The landing of a part of the marines and convicts took place the next day, and on the following, the remainder was disembarked. Business now sat on every brow, and the scene, to an indifferent spectator, at leisure to contemplate it, would have been highly picturesque and amusing. In one place, a party cutting down the woods; a second, setting up a blacksmith's forge; a third, dragging along a load of stones or provisions; here an officer pitching his marquee, with a detachment of troops parading on one side of him, and a cook's fire blazing up on the other. Through the unwearied diligence of those at the head of the different departments, regularity was, however, soon introduced, and, as far as the unsettled state of matters would allow, confusion gave place to system...

- Watkin Tench

* * * 

Yours, Australia Day 2016,

Harper McAlpine Black

The Rehabilitation of Buddhism

Boodhism presents a challenge to many systemizations of religion. In many crucial respects it does not conform – or does not seem to conform - to the norms of most other religions. It stands apart. Most obviously, it does not posit a supreme deity as most traditions do and it appears to be indifferent to the metaphysical questions that so occupy other religious systems. Among religions, it is somewhat problematic. This has led certain parties who should know better to make extravagant and often silly statements about it. His Holiness the Dalai Lama, for example, is on record as saying that Boodhism is not a religion at all – which is demonstrable and irksome nonsense but which exploits the fact that Boodhism is different in type to religions in general. Even such an authority as Rene Guenon, the French metaphysician – who, frankly, had a deeper knowledge of these matters than the present Dalai Lama - dismissed it as a “Hindoo heresy” and was reluctant to accord it any serious status as an integral tradition. More generally, for the Perennialist school of thought, guided throughout as it is by the work of Monsieur Guenon, Boodhism remains an uncomfortable fit in its model of orthodoxy which is based upon Platonic/Advaita Vedanta standards.

The present author (whose sympathies are somewhat consonant with the Perennialist school and are certainly Platonic) readily admits that he has had great trouble coming to terms with Boodhism, try as he may. To some measure this is because he has had far too many encounters with the half-baked sentimentalized post-modern pseudo-psychology that is passed off as Boodhism (with much encouragement from the Dalai Lama) in the spiritual wastelands of the West. But even during his many travels in India and Asia, with visits to temples and gompas and conversations with Lamas and Ahats, priests and laymen both, it has never really gelled. The only exception has been the Shin Boodist (Pureland) tradition of Japan, which does make sense to him, but only because it itself deviates from most of the norms of the wider Boodhist fold. He has read books, studied texts, seen movies – but the zest of Boodhism escapes him. Even on his current extended tour of India and Asia, made for the very purpose of becoming more familiar with the Indo-Asian traditions, he takes to Shaivism, Samkya, and other forms of Hindooism without trouble, but his encounters with Boodhism leave him unmoved. 

During his visit to the great Boodhist shrine, the Mahabodhi, at Boodha Gaya in the state of Bihar, however, he was able to witness certain rites that restored Boodhism to the forms of what he calls the alchimie primordiale. As related in previous posts, Boodha Gaya is a small town built around the restored temple that marks the site of the Boodha’s enlightenment. The ancient temple is huge and beautifully reconstructed in modern times, much to the credit of the lenient objectivity of the British Raj. In the rear of the temple court, in the west, stands the Bodhi Tree, the tree under which the Boodha, they say, sat and came to his spiritual realization. Around the temple complex are various sites marking the seven weeks that the Boodha then spent there following his enlightenment, those sites being points of devotion for the thousands of pilgrims who venture there every year. The tree, and under it, the diamond throne, are the very centre of the Boodhist world. It is believed that all Boodhas at all times were enlightened on that exact spot, and that, moreover, that spot was the first point of creation and will be the last point remaining at the end of time. 

The sacred place at which Boodhists press their forehead. Behind it the Bodhi Tree. 

This, in itself, rehabilitates Boodhism to some extent. Many authorities – and conspicuously the Dalai Lama – would have us believe that Boodhism is a system without a cosmology and without a fixed centre. For those of us accustomed to the Platonic/Advaita Vedanta model this supposed formlessness is both irritating and incomprehensible. A religion with no centre? No god? No creation? No start or finish? The Boodhist is urged to not fix upon a centre but to drift like a rudderless dinghy in an endless sea of vague nothing. How is that, one wants to know, a spirituality? 

But one discovers at Boodha Gaya that that is not really the case. Boodhism does have a centre. And a cosmology. And a point of start and finish. This was not explicit and concrete in the many centuries during which the Boodha Gaya temple complex was lost and forgotten in the forests of Bihar, but it is made clear again today. This author spent many hours over many days sitting in the shade of the Bodhi Tree watching the pilgrims come and go. Contrary to the psycho-babbling shapeless mush, the spiritual custard, served up by wide-eyed Boodhist Modernists in the West, and the evasive double-talk one often hears from Boodhists in the East, the very concrete religious mechanisms of Boodhism are perfectly apparent at Boodha Gaya, and they are pretty much identical to those of any other religion.

Some years ago the present author, in his academic guise, published an article on the symbolism of Islamic prayer. The prayer, he related, is a centering exercise that brings the devotee back to the spiritual centre that is, at once, the earth and the deepest reality of his or her inner state. This state, he argued, is Adamic, and he sketched the ways in which the prayer expresses the alchemical theme of autochthony. The full text of the article can be found here. In practice, the devotee – taking the place of Adam, formed of clay - stands in the Edenic sacred space marked by the prayer mat, the prayer mat traditionally decorated with a stylization of the Tree of Life, and proceeds to press his forehead to the point of sajda – annihilation – on the earth, the point where full submission transmutes the clay of his creation to the gold of spiritual fulfillment (the extreme malleability of gold being the operative metaphor for submission to the Divine Will.) Moreover, in a related article, the present author has added to this some observations concerning other peculiarities of the Islamic prayer ritual, specifically the way in which devotees arrange their feet in order to place pressure upon the liver, that organ having an important (but long forgotten) place in spiritual alchemy.

The Boodhist rites at Boodha Gaya conform to these practices exactly. The symbolism is the same. The author sat there watching these rites and suddenly recognized the ways in which the Boodhist spiritual economy is precisely consonant with that of Islam as he had sketched it on those articles. 

Pressing the forebead to the frame behind which is the Bodhi Tree. The frame and the surrounding walls are coated in a gold film. 

Boodhism, that is, is no different. There is, of course, a different arrangement of symbols, but the symbols themselves are the same, operate in the same way, and towards the same end. The state of fana – annihilation, submission – that is the objective of the Muslim prayer is exactly the same as this “Void” or “Nothingness” with which Boodhist double-speak so often confounds us. And what is the Bodhi Tree but the Tree of Life? And what is Boodha Gaya – the first and last – but Eden? What is it but the qibla of the Muslim, with the profound emptiness of the Kaaba in Mecca a symbol of that same Boodhist Void and Nothingess? 

But whereas the Muslim observes the prayer in the canonical manner at the appointed times each day, the Boodhist observes exactly the same in his pilgrimage to the Bodhi Tree, for there one can witness Boodhists in Islam-like prostration, turning to the Diamond Throne, falling to their knees and pressing their forehead to the earth in the gesture of sajda. Indeed, many of them adopt the same peculiar feet arrangement that is common in Islam and about which this author has written previously. 

Prostration towards the Bodhi Tree, along with the distinctive Muslim-like arrangement of the feet. 

It is a remarkable coincidence of practices and symbolisms. More than that, as the long procession of Boodhist devotees files past the place of the Throne under the Tree (the Tree in the Midst – to stress it again, precisely the same symbolism as the Tree in Eden) they turn and press their foreheads to a particular point on the fence that surrounds the sacred place. This point is framed by a rectangle that is much the same size as an Islamic prayer rug and which itself frames the sacred Tree behind it – so here we have an exact visual duplicate of the prayer rug with the Edenic Tree and that point, that centre, where the inner and outer worlds meet. 

Even more startling, the alchemical symbolism of that configuration of symbols is perfectly explicit because the surrounding fence, including the point where the Boodhist presses his forehead, has been painted with a film of pure gold paint. When he presses his forehead to the designated point the gold paint – peeling from the wear of years and the constant touching of the devoted – flakes off leaving a spot of pure gold on his forehead over his ‘third eye’. Devotees walk away from their devotions with a mark of gold on them – the Adamic gold of the autochthon on their forehead. In other words, these Boodhist rites exactly conform to those alchemical aspects of the Islamic rites – and so are united therein – that the present author explicated in his writings years ago. 

Needless to say, for someone looking for a solid foothold in the formless and featureless path of Boodhism, this came as a very welcome revelation. Boodhism is not so different after all. The view that it is different can largely be attributed to the intensely annoying habit of Boodhists to obfuscate and insist on exceptionalism. There are numerous commentators of a 'Perennialist' flavor, and other students of that disreputable shibboleth called 'comparative religion', who have attempted to explain how Boodhism 'approximates' other traditions. These efforts, usually highly theoretical, are not very helpful either. Instead, one needs to witness the living practices - read fewer books and see with eyes that can see what is plain to see. Boodhism isn't a centreless swamp of vapid nothingness after all. In its central rites, restored in Boodha Gaya just over a century ago, Boodhism is very obviously just another expression, a different configuration, of the alchimie primordiale, whatever Boodhist themselves might say.

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black