Reinterpreting World History

By David Livingstone, 5 September 2003

The modern version of history, as one begun in Greece, and secluded to Europe, is one wrought by certain prejudices that can be traced back to the eighteenth century. In Europe, the Bible commanded had largely commanded the perspective of history. But, during the Renaissance, “Humanists” emphasized their regard for philosophy, and thus the importance of the pagan Greeks. Still though, the Greek heritage they thought was to be traced back to Hermes, an Egyptian, and Zoroaster, a Persian.

In the eighteenth century, with the discovery of the purported linguistic relationship between Sanskrit and European languages, as well as through the influence of occult legends, scholars created the notion of an original “Indo-European” race. And so, focused on India as a cradle of civilization, attributing its inception to Aryan invaders.

However, while Enlightenment scholars had initially turned to India, the German Romantics of the early nineteenth century, perceiving an affinity between the Greek and German languages, came increasingly to regard Greece as the lost Golden Age of Aryan civilization they had been longing for.

The reconstruction of history according to a Euro-centric perspective was further aided though the prestige of “Reason” established by the Enlightenment. Reacting to the insistence on “Faith” as the basis of belief in Christianity, Enlightenment philosophers stressed instead the use of “Reason”, which, through science, came to be perceived as incompatible with the mounting inconsistencies made apparent in the Bible.

Thus, with the increasing acceptance of Darwinism, all history came to be seen as progress, specifically, the progress of “rationalism” or “Humanism”, supposed to have been incepted by the Greeks, and crowned by the success of the French Revolution and its implementation of secular rule.

The first error in this equation was to have regarded the Greeks as the first “free-thinkers”. Scholars' emphasis on the achievement of the Greeks has inhibited them from recognizing the cultural and scientific revolution that took place in Babylon in the sixth century BC, which had profound ramifications. Essentially, there, the ancient worship of a dying god was assimilated to astrology and magic, a cult known to the ancient world as that of the Chaldean Magi.

With the advance of the Persians, this cult was carried to those parts of the world that had come with the bounds of their immense empire, most notably, the Greek city-states of Ionia, on the western coast of Turkey. The adoption of Magian beliefs among the Greeks led there to the emergence of the cult of Orphism, and the philosophy of its greatest exponent, Pythagoras, and through him, Plato.

After the conquests of Alexander, these traditions, under Greek guise, were disseminated through the Roman Empire, flourishing particularly at Alexandria, where they fostered the creation of new mystical cults, namely, Hermeticism, Neoplatonism, and Gnosticism, all founded on the doctrines as taught in the “Ancient Mysteries”.

In turn, and throughout the so-called Dark Ages, these were picked up by the Arabs, where they led to the formation of the Sufis and the heretical branch of Shia Islam known as the Ismailis. In effect, it was contact with these traditions, introduced to them by the Arabs during the crusades, which rescued the Europeans from centuries of obscurity, leading to the emergence of the Age of Scholasticism and the legends of the Holy Grail.

The continuing influence of these traditions led to the Renaissance. That period though, was not a rejection of Christianity and the progress of “rationalism”, as offered by the Humanistic interpretation of history, but the revival of mysticism through the rediscovery of Neoplatonism and Hermeticism. The same tendencies were then perpetuated by the Rosicrucians, the Freemasons, and during the Enlightenment influenced the formation of Aryan race theory.

In effect, not only has history followed a course very different from that which has commonly been considered, but this ancient cult of a dying god, with its attendant beliefs in astrology, magic and alchemy, has shaped an alternate history, or, a hidden history, which has formed the basis of the Western occult tradition, and by that, much of Western culture, though in a manner that has yet to be fully discerned, due to its continuing suppression by the same emphasis on “rationalism”.

Regards,
David Livingstone
www.thedyinggod.com