The Prisca Theologia

When the Christian humanists of the Italian Renaissance studied the newly-discovered writings of the ancient philosophers, a new era opened in the self-image of Western civilization. It had long been taken for granted that, as the Bible relates, humanity toiled in ignorance and wickedness until the true God chose to reveal himself: to Noah, Abraham, Moses, and the Hebrew prophets, and finally in person as Jesus Christ. But these philosophers of antiquity, for all that they were pagans and polytheists, turned out to display a profound wisdom and a high spirituality. Some of them surely knew more than reason alone could explain: things that could only have come to them through divine revelation. The only reasonable conclusion was that God had not left his heathen children in total ignorance, but had revealed himself through their prophets (Zoroaster, Orpheus), priest-kings (Hermes Trismegistus), and inspired philosophers (Pythagoras, Plato, Plotinus, Porphyry).

The bearer of this good news was an enigmatic character: Georgios Gemistos Plethon (c.1356–1450). A high official of the Byzantine Empire (or what was left of it), he lived in Mistra in the Peloponnese, the last holdout of Christian Byzantium in the Greek peninsula. His public mission was to attend the Council of Florence and Ferrara, convened in 1438–39 in the hope of reconciling the Greek (Orthodox) and the Roman (Catholic) churches.

More privately, Gemistos met with the Florentine humanists, to whom he explained his vision of a "primordial theology" (prisca theologia) periodically revealed to the pagan world. His lineage of the ancient illuminates began in Chaldea or Persia with Zoroaster, then moved to Thrace with Orpheus, whose disciple Aglaophemus was the link to Pythagoras and Plato. It was in honor of the latter that Gemistos had adopted the surname Plethon. The aged envoy made a powerful impression on his Italian hosts, and not least on Cosimo de' Medici, father of the famous dynasty. After his departure, Cosimo founded a Platonic Academy in his villa at Careggi, near Florence, and placed the scholarpriest Marsilio Ficino at its head. This became the center for the celebration, study, translation, and propagation of the "perennial philosophy" (philosophia perennis), the wisdom common to Jews, Christians, and pagans.

Gemistos could produce canonical scriptures for nearly all of his ancient theologians. To Zoroaster he ascribed the Chaldean Oracles; to Orpheus, the Orphic Hymns; to Pythagoras, the Golden Verses, and to Plato the Republic, Laws, and other works. To these the Florentine Platonists would add the Corpus Hermeticum and its author, who was confidently assumed to be the Egyptian philosopher-king Hermes Trismegistus (see chapter 2).

In every case but Plato's, these attributions were mistaken. The Chaldean Oracles, Orphic Hymns, Golden Verses, and Corpus Hermeticum all date from the early centuries of the Common Era, whereas Pythagoras lived in the sixth century B.C., Zoroaster goodness knows when, and Orpheus and Hermes perhaps never lived at all. The cold shower of modern philology has dispelled the dream of the ancient theologians, just as biblical scholarship has proved that Moses did not write the Torah (the first five books of the Bible). But this makes no difference to whatever intrinsic spiritual value they may contain.

Gemistos was an especial admirer of the Chaldean Oracles, whose origin as we now know it is the best-documented and the most provocative. There was in Rome during the second century A.D. a family of astrologer-magicians called the Juliani, who like most of their profession passed as "Chaldeans." It would not be far wrong to compare them to the swamis and gurus of California, for in both places there was an openness to exotic cults. The senior Julianus, it appears, used his son as a trance-medium. While in trance, Julianus Jr. answered questions and uttered oracles that were believed to come from the gods. His material would have been utterly lost if the Neoplatonists had not preserved numerous fragments of it by quoting it in their works. From them it passed to Byzantium, where it was commented on by Michael Psellus (eleventh century), by Gemistos, and by the Italian Platonists, receiving monumental form in the edition by Francesco Patrizi (1593).

It would be correct to call the Juliani's activity "channeling," so long as the term is used in a precise and technical sense, not an emotional and derogatory one. The precise sense is this: the man or woman who speaks or writes the words in question does not claim to be their author, but to be acting as a channel for some other entity. The most famous and influential example is that of the Qur'an, for which Mohammed acted as channel, but never claimed authorship. In the case of the Oracles of the Juliani, they, like the Qur'an, were regarded as a divine revelation, not merely by cult members but by the greatest of Plato's commentators, Proclus.

On the whole, the Chaldean system accords with the Hermetic, Orphic, and Platonic ones, as Proclus was at pains to demonstrate. Leaving aside its complicated theology, it sees the human soul as having come down from a divine state and become temporarily united with the body. Spiritual practice has the goal of restoring the soul to its original heritage.

A few of the Oracles suggest that the Juliani and their circle also had an idea of bodily transmutation as a means towards immortality. For example:

The oracles of the Gods declare, that through purifying ceremonies, not the soul only, but bodies themselves become worthy of receiving much assistance and health: for (say they) the mortal vestment of bitter matter will, by this means, be preserved.

Psellus, the Christian commentator, gives this explanation of the idea:

[The Oracle] exhorteth therefore, that we refine the Body (which he understands by the Dregs of Matter) by divine [acts], or that, being stripped, we raise it up to the Aether; or that we be exalted by God to a place Immaterial and Incorporeal, or Corporeal but Aethereal or Coelestial, which Elias the Tisbite attained; and before him, Enoch, being Translated from this Life into a more Divine Condition, not leaving the dregs of Matter, or their Body, in a Precipice; the Precipice is, as we said, the Terrestrial Region.

As testified in the Bible, Enoch, Elijah, and Jesus left no physical body behind after their deaths. The same was believed of the Virgin Mary from the fifth century onward, and in 1950 the Catholic church proclaimed it dogma. Although always skeptical...