Esoteric Coffeehouse

Like all things of Hermetic extract, alchemy hails from Egypt, and its recorded origins can be traced back to the late antique world. The etymology of the name ‘alchemy’ is not clear – it may have referred to Egypt as the “black land” (chemia) or perhaps to the first stage of the alchemical work, nigredo (blackness) (1, 2). The beginnings of alchemy are shrouded in mystery, but it is known that, by 300-400 AD, Greek alchemists such as Pseudo-Democritus, Zosimos and Synesius were writing about the process of gold-making in mystical, obscure terms.

Alchemy has survived throughout the centuries based on a few fundamental concepts, which I have summarized as:

1. the tradition that viewed gold as the highest, and purest of metals.

2. the belief that matter was not inert, but continuously transformed itself into something ‘higher’. Thus all metals would eventually become gold, given enough time.

3. human beings could hasten the work of nature, transforming metals into gold by means of an intermediary substance called the Philosopher’s Stone. This Stone was seen as not only bettering metals but human beings as well, lengthening life and curing illnesses (3).

4. the process of going to the heart of matter and enacting its change was seen as something sacred or even mystical; thus there was a fundamental participation of the alchemist in the work resulting in an inner change as well as an outer one.

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Welcome to part II of the Barack Obama and Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey: An Appraisal. This took some time to post - for the reason that I’m moving house these days and I don’t have access to the internet yet. I can’t begin to tell you how grueling it is not to have broadband: it’s like half of my arm is cut off. Ouch! Anyway, without much ado and whining, here’s part II.

To recap, last time we talked about section I of Joseph Campbell’s heroic journey, called “Departure” (1). We left our hero right when he was in the “belly of the whale”, but by now he’s out of it and ready to proceed to the next major section of his adventure.

II. Initiation

1. Road of Trials – succession of obstacles

Barack Obama has encountered a number of obstacles or hurdles that he has surpassed in political ascendancy. The first was the candidature for the Illinois State Senate in 1996, when he had to eliminate better titled candidates as Gha-is Askia and his mentor Alice Palmer. He succeeded, albeit using what some critics said as being unfair tactics – he successfully challenged the voting campaign of both candidates who were hence legally suspended from the contest (2).

The second obstacle was his failed candidacy to US House of Representatives in 2000, when he was defeated by incumbent Bobby Rush by two to one. This was a sore defeat, the only time when he considered giving up politics altogether (3). He didn’t, and Obama learned many useful aspects of campaigning from this attempt.

In 2004, he successfully run his candidacy for US Senate. Finally, in 2007, he obtained the endorsement of the Democrats for Presidency against the better titled Hillary Clinton.

 

2. The Meeting with the Goddess –  marriage between the hero and a queenlike or mother-like figure

In 1988, Obama met Michelle Robinson, a fellow Harvard Law graduate,  when he was doing a summer internship at law firm Sidley Austin. He married her in 1992 and has two children with her. Obama is deeply admirative of his wife, whom he called “his rock”. He speaks of her, “There’s something about her that projects such honesty and strength. It’s what makes her such an unbelievable professional, and partner, and mother, and wife” (4).

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Even as I was deeply immersed into research of the Hermetic tradition and the god Thoth, I could not avoid being drawn into the current events of Barack Obama’s US election. I have always thought that the esotericists (particularly those of Hermetic extract) have been men and women of the world, engaged in the transformation of the world into a better place. Perhaps it is down this line that I want to live as well, so please understand if I may from time to time jump thousands of years from Thoth to Barack Obama and back again. This exercise is, of course, carried out in the spirit of esotericism: looking at the underlying trends behind the surface.

It has hence occurred to me that Obama’s image and story can be compared to Joseph Campbell’s myth of the Hero, which Campbell called the “monomyth” (1). Whether consciously or unconsciously, people – and sometimes Obama himself – tend to project this image upon him. As early as 2006, he was called star and legend (2), and recently I have even read an online blog where the writer called him ‘savior’! (3) Mind you, I’m not laying a claim of profound originality on this –  I discovered then that George Lucas has already made note of Obama following the Hero’s Journey (4) and there are two bloggers that talked about it, albeit sketchily (5, 6). However, I would like to look at this more in detail than the others I have read.

Let’s start with the beginning. For those that don’t know, Joseph Campbell (1904-1987) was one of the foremost mythologists of his age (7). He is primarily remembered for his groundbreaking book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces. It is in this one that he articulated the myth of the hero’s journey, which directly influenced George Lucas’ Star Wars, Disney’s The Lion King, and countless movies and books ever since (8). The book ‘deconstructs’ the journey of the hero in a number of steps. It is my intention here to compare these steps with the story of Obama’s rise to power and Presidency.

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These days if you turn on National Geographic or the Discovery channel you can be sure to run into a program that talks about ancient Egypt and the Pyramids. It is fairly obvious that Pharaonic Egypt continues to exercise a profound fascination on people’s minds. Modern folk are not exception, but the rule, for almost every period in history was mesmerized by the mystery of ancient Egypt. Starting with the Greeks, continuing with the Romans, Islamic culture, the Renaissance down to the present, Egypt continues to embody the mystery of the beginnings of civilization. For most people, the legacy of Egypt is a dead culture buried deep within the sands of the Valley of Kings: but for many of those studying or practicing Hermeticism, it is still very much alive. Today, it is becoming more and more likely that at least part of the ancient Egyptian heritage passed through the figure of the god Thoth to an offshoot of him, Hermes Trismegistus, and then on to the modern times.

Ancient Egyptian religion is still shrouded in mystery, despite the translations of the hieroglyphs. Today we associate this religion mostly with the cult of Osiris and Isis, as well as the sun-god Re. However, it now appears that the god Thoth was an equally, or eventually more important god than these.

I must confess that I have encountered problems trying to unearth the mysterious figure of Thoth. There’s hardly anything up-to-date written about him: my main sources had to remain at the level of 1922’s classic by P. Boylan (1) and a 1973 book by J.C. Bleeker (2), none of which cover the late antique transformation of Thoth into Hermes Trismegistus. For Hermes and Hermes Trismegistus there is quite an enlightening book written by the founder of Western Esotericism research, A. Faivre (3). Yet in the end the information on Thoth is sadly disjointed, not updated and fragmentary, as if destined to perpetuate the myth and mystique of this shadowy god!

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During the Renaissance, scholars were convinced that the surviving Hermetic fragments – notably the Corpus Hermeticum and the Emerald Tablet – originated in ancient Egypt. They believed that the Hermetic manuscripts were authored by a sage called Hermes Trismegistus, who was contemporary to the Biblical Moses and the great Pharaonic civilization. The Renaissance thinkers hence regarded with reverence the Corpus, and brilliant scholars like Marsilio Ficino, Pico della Mirandola, Cornelius Agrippa, Giordano Bruno and others sought to unveil the perennial wisdom contained in the Hermetic writings. A veritable revolution of ideas and letters was unleashed, with a flourishing of alchemy, magic, astrology and kabbalistic practices.

However, in 1614, a French classical scholar named Isaac Casaubon destroyed the magic of Hermes Trismegistus. He maintained, upon careful analysis of the Corpus Hermeticum, that the writings were not originating from ancient Egypt but from the 200-400 AD Greek circles, and that Hermes Trismegistus, far than being a contemporary of Moses, was rather a contemporary of the late Roman emperors. Undeniably, there are elements in the Corpus Hermeticum that mirror late antique Greek philosophy.

Casaubon’s deconstructive analysis may have dealt a deadly blow to the Renaissance belief in the antiquity of Hermetic writings, but it did not stop esoteric groups and thinkers from regarding them highly. Nevertheless, academic scholars avoided the analysis of the Corpus Hermeticum until the middle of the 20^th century.

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