Blavatsky and Gnosticism - some random thoughts

Sometimes I'm amazed that anyone dares to speak authoritatively about anything at all.  The history of thought is so vast that it seems to me impossible to actually know anything about anything.  Maybe that's why I'm going to be a librarian - because I'm a generalist with a broad and shallow knowledge about lots of things and a deep knowledge about nothing.

Which brings me to Madame Blavatsky.  The first I ever heard of her was when I bumped into Aengus in the religion section of Hodges Figgis at Christmas.  I was browsing the shelves, not really knowing what I was looking for, but he went straight for the shiny white multi-volume tome that is Madame Blavatsky's Master work.  It extends, according to http://www.blavatsky.net/,  3 feet on a bookshelf.  I made a mental note never to undertake any exploration of her work.  To just forget she ever existed.

The problem is that Aengus has this habit of planting seeds of enquiry in my mind.  He sort of mentions things in the course of conversation that I don't know anything about and next thing I'm plundering the UCD catalogue, trying to find a book that will get me up to speed.  It was when I went to retrieve Rudolf Steiner's Theosophy that I next came across the terrifying sight of Blavatsky's magnum opus on the shelf.  I studiously ignored it and took down Steiner's slim volume instead.

But I've found myself going to visit Blavatsky about once a week since Christmas.  She's shelved right down the back of the philosophy section in an awkward spot which only skinny vegetarians can access.  So I've been to visit her, but I could never bring myself to attempt a reading. 

Until today. 

I'm supposed to be writing a business report, so it seemed like the perfect opportunity to embark on the exploration of three feet of irrelevant text.  I squeezed my way down the theosophy aisle and regarded the work with awe.  Next to it, on the shelf, was an enticing looking volume (slim at 228 pages) called "The Allure of Gnosticism: the gnostic experience in Jungian psychology and contemporary culture".  I had to have that too, not least because Aengus was talking about gnosticism on the phone yesterday and I am trying, like Mark Patrick Headtheball, to allow myself to be swept along by such synchronous events.        

So with Gnosticism tucked under one arm, I plucked up the courage and took Isis Unveiled vol. 1 from the shelf and sat on the floor right there and read the 45-page introduction.  First thoughts:  this is really readable.  I expected it to be written in obscure archaeisms, but it is geared towards the neophyte and much of the introduction is a gloss of terms which I've had only a fuzzy understanding of until now.

Points of most interest and vague thoughts so far: a brief discussion of numerology, in particular numbers 1, 2, 3, 4 and 10 which, I noticed, correspond in meaning to the first four cards of the major arcana in Tarot; the magician being the magic one created out of nothing; the dualism of two, the creativity of three and the stability of four.  Ten meanwhile being the culmination of the cycle and reducible once more to the beginning, i.e. one.  Very excited by the making of these connections.  I know, I know, I'm just a bit slow sometimes.

Having finished the intro. to that, I turned to my book about Gnosticism and read that introduction.  Again, very interesting.  Robert A. Segal summarises the essential difference between existentialism and Gnosticism.  For both, "the central tenet ... is the radical alienation of human beings from the world.  Human beings find themselves trapped  in a world that is at odds with their true nature." (p. 5)  The difference between the two being that the alienation from one's true self is surmountable in Gnosticism, while in existentialism it is not (p.6).

Now - bear with me a second, this is going somewhere - when I plugged this thought into my matrix I had to immediately run home and dig out this old poetry book that I love, 'One Hundred Modern Poems, edited by Selden Rodman'.  I got it when I was a teenager and it was one of those volumes that spoke to me.  The reason, I now realise, that it spoke to me was because I used to be an existentialist.  The following, by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, was my favourite poem of the collection.  It never failed to stir up a welcome teenage angst.

Twilight of the Outward Life
by Hugo von Hofsmannsthal (translated by Peter Viereck)

And children still grow up with longing eyes
That know of nothing, still grow tall and perish,
And no new traveller treads a better way;

And fruits grow ripe and delicate to cherish
And still shall fall like dead birds from the skies,
And where they fell grow rotten in a day.

And still we feel cool winds on limbs still glowing,
That shudder westward; and we turn to say
Words, and we hear words; and cool winds are blowing

Our wilted hands through autumns of unclutching.
What use is all our tampering and touching?
Why laughter, that must soon turn pale and cry?

Who quarantined our lives in separate homes?
Our souls are trapped in lofts without a skylight;
We argue with a padlock till we die,

In games we never meant to play for keeps.
And yet how much we say in saying 'twilight,'
A word from which man's grief and wisdom seeps

Like heavy honey out of swollen combs.

I think this poem beautifully illustrates that teenage existentialist fug.  In my volume, the corner of this page is turned down and I have underlined in pencil the last two verses.  I still love the poem, but now I see it from a different viewpoint.  It no longer describes me - it describes a person I once was.  I'm going to need a new poem to describe my Gnostic state and I think Yeats might have the answer but if anyone (of my millions of readers!) has a suggestion of a great Gnostic poem, I would love to hear it.