9

The Hermetic Universe of Ancient Times

By now readers might appreciate how important and significant are the evolutionary ideas of the ancients, and in particular the musical revelations of the Pythagoreans. We know, however, that Pythagoras, like all other great spiritual leaders, was merely passing on knowledge that came originally from the priest-astronomers of ancient Egypt. Possibly the Egyptians also inherited the main tenets of this wisdom from the fabled flood survivors of ancient myth, who themselves could possibly have received instruction from an even earlier race. This continuous evolutionary line appears to have originated in the belief system of the “primitive” Neanderthal, who regarded the number 7, the fundamental symbol of the octave, as sacred. The seven bear skulls found in the stone altar at the Neanderthal site at Drachenloch in Switzerland indicate that this sacred number symbolism dates back at least 75,000 years.

With the Greeks, however, came a much more overt, logical description of the theory of transcendental evolution, which the Pythagoreans neatly summed up in the two key esoteric symbols already discussed, namely the classical formula pi, 22/7, and the original “philosopher’s stone,” the Tetrad, illustrated by placing ten pebbles on the ground in the shape of a 4–3–2–1 triangle.

The Tetrad was called by the Pythagoreans the “model of the gods” and the “source of nature.” It was thus regarded as the blueprint for the development of all evolutionary phenomena, above and below: the 4–3– 2–1 format of the symbol is in fact a remarkably accurate blueprint of the processes involved at the biomolecular level, for it describes perfectly the sequences of genetic processes involved in the synthesis of amino acids.

The formula pi is also an expression of the same evolutionary process. So the four-base/tripleoctave symmetry embodied in the classical convention, 22/7, which can be expressed diagrammatically like this:

denotes the first two levels of the Tetrad:

The two higher stages in its evolutionary development, marked by the two pebbles at the third level and the single one at the apex, are a combined expression of the greater “trinity” above.

When this model is applied to the higher evolution of the individual, the combined four-and three-pebble stages, with their four-base/tripleoctave symmetry, represent the fundamental qualities of all human beings—walking trinities with the capacity to sense, emote, and perceive. By and large, we can all do these things to greater or lesser degrees; they are perfectly natural human functions. The next two stages in the Tetrad, however—the third, denoted by the two pebbles, and the fourth, with its single pebble at the apex—stand for higher human functions that unfortunately are not universal. This is where what we might call “original thought” comes into play, which is the harmonious product of a balanced combination of our sensations, emotions, and perceptions. This spark of real consciousness is denoted by the first of the two pebbles at the third stage of our evolutionary Tetrad. The second pebble represents the other side of this metaphysical coin: light itself. The topmost pebble therefore symbolizes the final, transcendental note of this whole musical process. Generally referred to nowadays as a “concept,” this signal, harmonious and therefore transcendental, then continues to exist as a single new note in the greater scale above. We see from the genetic code that the “greater scale,” the scale up from the base scale of the four chemical bases, consists of precisely twenty-two higher notes—twenty amino-acid signals and the two signals coding for “start” and “stop”—a triple octave. It follows, therefore, that the greater scale into which the conscious mind can input is also structured as a “triple octave,” a “trinity” above.

We can now try to apply the process described by the Tetrad to the greater cosmic scales outlined in the last two chapters. If solar beings and galactic beings are for real, they should fit easily into an overall hermetic picture of universal events.

As we have noted, the Greeks believed that all cosmological entities like the planets and the stars were conscious beings, and that the universe itself was a living animal—a zoon—and therefore completely organic in nature. We have seen how such an organism might develop, through an ascending hierarchy of scales, from biomolecules to galaxies. Remembering that there are exactly four of these fundamental scales, we can envisage the whole universe as being a vast, cosmological representation of the Hermetic Code itself, a multidimensional Tetrad:

One of the most significant features of this diagram is that the four orders of intelligence depicted, from DNA to the galactic helix, are each represented by the note Do. That is, they are all manifestations of the very same note; only the scale is different. This, of course, is precisely what is being alluded to in that all-embracing dictum of Thoth, “As above, so below,” which tells us that the symmetries of the processes of creation are the same at every level of existence, above us, below us, and in between, of course, in our minds.

So these four basic orders of intelligence or life all resonate at compatible frequencies, with each successive note, Do, vibrating, according to musical theory, at exactly twice the pitch and frequency of the preceding one. An octave, remember, is a measure of the doubling of the rate of vibrations in a given scale. This indicates that there are unique, tangible connections between the four “base notes,” the vibrations of each being whole-number coordinates of the greater evolutionary scale.

Theoretically the super-resonant galactic helix, representing the ultimate note, Do, of the third and final evolutionary octave, would ultimately have the power to strike a single new note up onto the greatest scale of them all: the universal scale. What happens beyond that is anybody’s guess. I have found myself trying to envisage here a dynamic, cyclic scenario, whereby a given proportion of the energies created by the galactic helix reenters, possibly through the quantum field, the primary DNA scale. After all, some thing, some kind of force or intelligence, is ensuring that the universe manifests and evolves strictly according to the laws described by the Hermetic Code, and the most obvious choice as to the possible source of this intelligence surely must be the ultimate product of the whole evolutionary process. Remember that the galactic helix, the fourth and last base note of our universal triple octave, is in fact reinforcing, at a higher pitch and frequency, the first base note of the entire scale, represented by DNA. But DNA is not simply a note. It is also an entire scale, and the first “note” of this primary DNA scale would have to be one of the base notes of the genetic code, one of the four inert chemical bases. Conceivably therefore, it could be at this stage, on the level of the simple inorganic molecule, that the creative vibrations of the galaxy above reenter, through the quantum field, the endless cycle of life. Thus the chemical base might seem inert from a scientific perspective, but in reality it may have already been imbued by the powers above with some sort of rudimentary, radarlike intelligence, providing it with at least enough awareness to be in the right place—the living cell—at exactly the right time.

REINCARNATION

As an interesting aside, it is worth pointing out that the process of evolution described above hints at a possible explanation for the emergence of the Buddhist and Hindu beliefs about reincarnation, which is also a cyclic description of evolution.

The Pythagorean concept of metempsychosis, or the “transmigration of souls,” expresses much the same idea. Pythagoras regarded the soul as a fallen angel locked within a body and condemned to a cycle of rebirths until it has rid itself of all impurities. The cycle being described, from birth to death to birth again and so on, could be regarded as being, in a sense, circular, where the evolving entity keeps returning back to the point of departure, or to the moment of its conception. But then, if the soul were improving its lot at each turn, this would imply a slight “upward” movement after each cycle, one lifetime being superimposed on top of the next in ever-ascending circles. This is significant, for, if we were to draw an imaginary line tracing the path of this recurring entity as it gradually evolved, the overall figure so described would take the form of the most fundamental configuration of all evolutionary processes—a helix.

Unfortunately this question of recurring lifetimes represents something of a departure from the main thrust of this study. A detailed investigation would require a great deal more time and space than I currently have. Possibly some time in the future we might be able to investigate this subject in more detail, but for the moment we shall continue our search for evidence in support of the ancients’ view of a living cosmos.

THE CONCEPTION OF THE UNIVERSE

The Greeks’ definition of the universe—a zoon—is wholly unambiguous. They regarded the whole cosmos as the biological product of a fertilized ovum, a living, organic creature conceived through some form of procreative activity. By whom or in what is clearly the most profound mystery of all.

Whatever its genealogy, however, most origin myths agree that the present universe was created, or rather conceived. Take the example most familiar to Christians: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.”¹

In Genesis, the creation or conception of the universe is described as having taken place in a watery medium, which in ancient scriptures always has a feminine or passive connotation: “And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.”²

Then comes the moment of conception, the initial act of (pro)creation: “And God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light. . . . And God divided the light from the darkness.”³

So the primordial cosmic “ovum” divided into two complementary yet quite distinct proto-cells, one light, one dark, or one active, one passive.

In a similar vein, the Vedic version of universal origins asserts that God “first with a thought created the waters, and placed his seed in them.”⁴ This again suggests that the origin of the universe was primarily a natural biological event.

In Vedic literature there are hymns dedicated to the god of the primeval waters. This is Indra, the god of rain, who is said to have released the waters to flow into the cosmic ocean and to have revealed the creative light of the god Agni—the sun.

To the early Greeks too, water was considered a primary element of creation. The philosopher Thales, for example, believed that the Earth floated on water, which was the medium from which all life evolved. Much the same view was held by the Pythagoreans, who thought that sunlight penetrated the primeval slime of the Earth to generate life.

Of all known origin myths, the Egyptian account is possibly the oldest. Thus each of the above examples is merely a reprise of the original theme, first set out by the priests of Hermopolis, the spiritual seat of Thoth. Hermopolitan myth speaks of eight principal gods who appeared simultaneously on the “Island of Flame,” which rose like a hill from the eternal waters.

As we can see, virtually all of these creation myths agree on two fundamental points: first, that before the universe/world/life came into existence, there were only endless or eternal waters—the passive, negative element—and second, that the creative act itself involved the introduction of light, or a flame—the active, positive element. Very often this fusion of forces is described as having occurred through the intervention of a god or gods—the universal mediating principle. Excluding this latter allusion to “divine intervention,” we are left with a description of the universe’s creation that in fact bears striking similarities to that currently on offer from modern science.

THE SCIENTIFIC PERSPECTIVE

Possibly many readers will already be familiar with the “big bang” theory of the origin of the universe, a proposition first put forward by the Belgian priest-astronomer Georges Henri Lemaitre in the 1920s. This is now generally accepted as the most likely explanation of how matter, space, and time came into being. A persistent background microwave radiation spreading out evenly across the entire cosmos and with a temperature of around 3.5 Kelvin (3.5 degrees above absolute zero) was recorded by the radio-astronomers Robert Wilson and Arno Penzias at Bell Laboratories in 1964. Most scientists now agree that this radiation is very probably the residual vibration of the creation of the universe, of the biggest bang in history.

But what exactly was it that originally went bang? Lemaitre suggested that the universe had been born from a single primeval quantum of potential energy, a kind of superdense mother of all atoms. After the initial cataclysmic explosion, this primordial “atom” began dividing so rapidly and energetically that it eventually gave rise to all the matter in the universe. As the first atomic nuclei (protons and neutrons composed of quarks) proliferated, with quantum duplication taking place at a phenomenal rate, space and time simultaneously unfolded to accommodate them. This means that before the primordial quantum split asunder and the resultant superhigh energies began to radiate out from the “epicenter,” there was no space, no time, nothing except the original quantum itself.

Lemaitre realized that quantum theory supported this idea of space and time appearing after the big bang. As we saw earlier, in quantum mechanical calculations, space and time are statistically meaningless in respect to individual events involving subatomic quanta. Therefore, if the universe did originate from a single, self-duplicating quantum, space and time would not have existed at that point; they would not have appeared until the primordial “atom” had duplicated in sufficient quantities to produce a significant number of measurable quanta.

According to big-bang theorists, the universe was in thermal equilibrium during its earliest development and was filled with the most intense light traveling out in all directions (“And God said, ‘Let there be light’”). The temperatures involved at this stage would have been in the trillions of degrees. The original wavelength of these first generations of photons would have been very short, but as space expanded it stretched out the wavelength of the light, so producing a one-way shift to lower and lower temperatures—white light shifting to blue, blue to red, and so on. The present cool state of the universe, barely 4 degrees Celsius above absolute zero, is the end result of this fifteen-billion-year-long fireworks display.

Within half a billion or so years after the primordial conception the force of gravity caused pockets of high-density dust clouds and atomic nuclei to condense into galaxy formations. We can still observe such a process at work in the creation of proto-stars (“baby” stars) forming as dense clouds of cosmic dust collapse inward, such as is currently being observed in the Large Magellanic Cloud system, a member of our own immediate cluster of local galaxies.

Individual stars within these galaxies are all born as protostars. As they develop through high-energy nucleon collision caused by gravitational collapse, these baby stars rapidly approach maturity and ultimately “ignite,” converting hydrogen to helium at a phenomenal rate. At this stage they are classed as mature, “main sequence” stars—like our own sun in its present state. Main sequence stars, after billions of years of relatively constant, active life, eventually metamorphose into old-timers—red giants. Red giants then either degenerate gradually to become static white or brown dwarfs, or they reach a critical energy level and explode as supernovae. A supernova is a star that has become pregnant with a vast store of nuclear energy and ultimately explodes, projecting massive quantities of radiation and heavier chemical elements back out into the cosmos, where it is then recycled. It’s an interesting reflection that every single atom of which you and I are composed came from exploding supernovae out there in deepest space.

Until very recently it was thought that any region of space was much the same as any other—that galaxies developed relatively undisturbed by other concentrations of mass. This view of a uniform distribution of galaxies was initially supported by data obtained from high-altitude flight experiments using redeployed U2 spy-planes. These experiments, coordinated by the American astrophysicist George Smoot in 1995–96, appeared at first to show that the universe is expanding uniformly and with a constant speed in all directions. However, more accurate experimental procedures later revealed that this was not so and that in fact galaxy densities are not strictly homogeneous and that there are huge clusters of galaxies gathering in some regions and vast expanses of empty space in others.

Our own galaxy is a member of a relatively small local cluster, all hurtling through space at a velocity of around six hundred kilometers per second. Current theory holds that the extraordinarily rapid motion of these massive bodies is caused by the gravitational pull of a very large concentration of mass situated a great distance away. This “Great Attractor,” as it is called, is thought to be another, incredibly vast cluster of galaxies, a kind of supercluster situated millions of light years distant. These greater galactic “cluster cells,” varying so dramatically in size and luminosity, indicate that the expanding universe is far from symmetrical, that its “body,” like yours, is lumpy and uneven and much more structured than had previously been thought.

Astrophysicists have now discovered the “seeds” of these structural characteristics in slight fluctuations in the cosmic background radiation, which suggests that they must already have been present in the fabric of the universe as little as 300,000 years after the big bang. These early seeds were the primordial imprints of creation, “cosmic genes” in which were encoded all the characteristics of the universe as it exists today.

Science currently recognizes four fundamental forces in the universe: the weak and strong nuclear forces, the electromagnetic force, and the gravitational force. An instant after the big bang, however, there was only one unified force: matter was indistinguishable from energy, and the first rudimentary quanta—the quarks—had not yet been formed. These high-energy conditions at the very beginning of time are now the focus of much attention. Scientists believe that a fuller understanding of the nature of universal origins will come through a rational convergence on the first moments after this unique moment of “conception,” when only one unified force existed and where the laws and the components of the universe were much simpler than they are today.

In his book Wrinkles in Time, George Smoot uses an interesting analogy to describe the nature of his work. He compares the quest to understand the origin of the universe by converging on the moment of creation to that of tracing the evolutionary development of the human being back to his or her origins. The human being is an immensely complex entity with definite and unique physiological, emotional, and psychological characteristics. But if we trace such an entity back through its life toward the moment of its conception, it appears progressively simpler in structure, until ultimately we find a uniform set of relatively simple digital instructions encoded within the chromosomes.

Smoot is obviously using this comparison between the universe and the individual only as an analogy, but, like so many cosmologists and astrophysicists today, he seems particularly fond of biological metaphors. For example, he says that “the universe appears to be as it is because it must be that way; its evolution was written in its beginnings—in its cosmic DNA, if you will.”⁵ He also talks of “quantum self-replication” taking place at an explosive rate very soon after the primordial event, much the same as individual cells self-replicate at an “explosive” rate as a living organism rapidly “expands” after conception.

Another example of the use of “bio-cosmic” metaphor is given by Professor Paul Davies in his book The Last Three Minutes, in which he discusses a proposition made by a group of Japanese physicists working on the idea of “false” and “true” vacuums. A false vacuum is an excited vacuum, a region of so-called empty space in which a great deal of quantum activity (particle interaction) is still present. The natural tendency of a false vacuum is to decay to its lowest possible energy state—a true vacuum. The Japanese postulated an alternative process based on a simple mathematical model, where a small bubble of false vacuum surrounded by a true vacuum would inflate and subsequently expand into a larger universe in a big bang. Davies uses the analogy of a rubber sheet (representing the true vacuum of an existing universe) blistering up in a given place and ballooning out to form a “baby universe,” connected to the original universe by a “wormhole,” the opening of which would appear to an observer in the mother universe as a black hole. The black hole then evaporates and finally disappears, pinching off the “umbilical cord”—the wormhole—leaving the baby universe, a high-energy false vacuum, to grow and develop independently.

Here again we have a scientist using what appears in recent times to have become the accepted idiom for describing cosmological processes—the biological metaphor. Popular books on cosmology and astrophysics now abound with such terms, and one begins to wonder whether this is simply a fashionable trend, or is it, perhaps, some deeper influence affecting the development of human consciousness.

We touched earlier upon the possible nature of this influence, when I proposed that human ideas or inventions could be regarded as the metaphysical equivalent of the amino acid, or perhaps a chain of amino acids. A string of related ideas, which together make up what we would call a full-blown concept (such as the Hermetic Code, for example), we might call a metaphysical “gene,” or perhaps a chain of genes. Now genes can be either “dominant” or “recessive,” active or passive. They can lie dormant in the human genome for generations and they can reemerge once more as dominant genes anytime conditions become favorable.

Perhaps this is what is happening now in respect of the Hermetic Code. It is surfacing once again, and while science has been systematically proving the existence of hermetic symmetries at all levels of material and biological creation, simultaneously there has been a great upsurge in awareness of the remarkable achievements and beliefs of our remote ancestors. Remember, the Hermetic Code has been the dominant feature of human consciousness many times before, in the time of Muhammad, for example, and of Jesus, Zoroaster, Pythagoras, Buddha, Confucius, Moses—the list goes on and on, back into the mists of time. It is entirely possible, therefore, that we are currently witnessing—participating in, even—the beginnings of yet another renaissance in the development of human consciousness, the emergence of a new, “modern” version of the oldest creed on Earth, one that naturally requires us, either consciously or unconsciously, to reinvent the hermetic universe.

Arguably the best example of the recycled concept currently on offer is the theory of universal origins proposed by the physicist Lee Smolin. Smolin has suggested that there may be a kind of Darwinian natural selection taking place among universes and that the emergence of organic life and conscious beings is a by-product of this process. In other words, he is proposing that the universe is a zoon.

Clearly this “natural” conclusion is just about as close to the process I am trying to envisage as it is possible to come, for not only does it agree with the known scientific facts concerning the origin of the universe, it also happens to fit all the criteria of the hermetic view of creation.

We earlier noted Smoot’s discovery that galaxies, like stars, are grouped in clusters—cluster cells—and even superclusters. This gives a universal structure and pattern of development very reminiscent of the way living cells gather together in clusters to create a variety of organs, bone, muscle, nerve tissue, skin, and so forth. So perhaps the Great Attractor, the immense supercluster toward which our local group is surging, is an “organ” of some kind in the body of some great being: its “heart,” an “eye,” or even its “brain.” If this were the case, then the relatively small local cluster of galactic life forms, on the back of one of which we are presently riding, might seem lowly and insignificant, but like, say, a blood cell entering into a vital organ of the body, our galaxy would be a contributor to life itself.

THE METAPHYSICAL PERSPECTIVE

Many readers will probably be aware that this hermetic picture of an evolving, organic cosmos is completely at odds with the orthodox scientific version of events, which holds that the universe is essentially an involutionary phenomenon and that, given enough time, all physical systems within it must ultimately descend into chaos. The basis of this assumption is the most fundamental scientific law, the second law of thermodynamics, which says that energy has a natural and irreversible tendency to dissipate. This is what is apparently happening in the universe all the time, where high-density pockets of energy are unevenly distributed, mainly in stars, but also in planets and interstellar space. All this energy is continually dispersing, and on our own planet this is what provides the impetus for all the chemical reactions that make life possible.

Unlike closed physical systems, which simply “waste” their energy, biological systems are highly organized entities, continually evolving into states of ever-increasing complexity. They are intelligent, in tune with their environment, and so are capable of “exporting” entropy (disorder, chaos) and of bringing in energy from outside themselves to sustain their own regenerative and creative processes. As a cell grows and ultimately self-replicates, it is continually taking in energy from its environment and using it to manufacture essential biomolecular components. Similarly we ourselves take in “free energy” in the form of food, air, impressions, light quanta, and so on—all of which are residual products of the greater, entropic movement of a thermodynamic universe. Thus, say scientists, organic systems do not actually violate the law of thermodynamics; they are simply able to temporarily evade the overall degenerative process as and when physical conditions are favorable. So we are all, in a sense, living on borrowed time. When the primary source of our energy—the sun—begins its inexorable descent into chaos, life on Earth will become history. Life in time, that is.

But what about the proposed higher forms of “life” discussed earlier? What about all the solar beings in all the galaxies and all the galactic life forms existing throughout the entire universe? Surely such entities, once created, would continue to exist and to evolve over billions of years irrespective of the dissipative physical energies harnessed in a given, isolated planetary system. Thus the heart of the solar cell— its sun—may die, but its “higher self,” or the creative “genes” synthesized during its lifetime, must live on in the greater galactic scale. We earlier ascertained that solar and galactic helices, if they are a reality, would exist in other, greater dimensions—on the plane of light, for example, or in the quantum field—where there is no time as we know it and therefore no frame of reference within which to define a degenerative dispersal of energy, an increase in entropy. This would explain why a photon can travel across the entire universe and still maintain the maximum velocity possible—because at the speed of light it is free from the ordinary ravages of time.

Clearly, therefore, there could be processes in the universe that continue to unfold irrespective of the directional flow of time. What is more, if these higher organic life forms do indeed exist, and all solar and galactic systems are by and large becoming more and more “conscious,” then we might say that the overwhelming tendency of the greater universe is to become less and less “chaotic” as it evolves.

In The Infinite Harmony I suggested that the human animal, composed of billions upon billions of cells, is, in effect, a universe in miniature, whose highly organized structures and functions are created from the coordinated activity of a host of chromosomes, or microcosmic “galaxies.” Such a body is conceived and then born, after which it grows through successive stages of development until it reaches maturity. Ultimately it gives up the ghost and subsequently releases its component particles, through natural decay, back into the entropic void. It is, however, possible for the human being’s emotional, psychological, and spiritual output to continue long after the body has passed its prime and begun its inexorable descent back into the ocean of chaos. Furthermore, even when a given individual is defined as “dead,” though virtually no trace of his or her physical existence remains in space and time, the overall influences generated during his or her planetary existence—ideas, impressions, concepts, and so on—can persist, as in the well-documented cases of history’s major religious figures, for millennia. In a sense, these influences exist independently of the ordinary time of the individual, whose life span is measured only in decades.

Obviously, therefore, if the universe is alive, then presumably what is being observed through the eyes of astronomers and astrophysicists represents only its physical body developing in time. Its higher conscious functions, that is its “emotional,” “psychological,” and “spiritual” worlds, would be invisible to us, ostensibly because such processes would be operating in spheres that reach way beyond the boundaries of the physical body, in the realms of the other realities already discussed, in which statistical notions of space and time lose all meaning.

These “spheres” and their respective boundaries are the subject of the next chapter. We have already divided the cosmos into four fundamental scales or orders of “intelligence”: DNA, the human brain, the solar helix, and the galactic helix. But it is possible further to integrate these four scales into a more comprehensive cosmic picture by considering them in respect of another essentially hermetic concept, based on the assumption that the hermetic universe, a four-centered, living entity, exists and operates within an overall framework of seven interpenetrating dimensions.