Paths of the Ancient Sages: a Pythagorean History Peter Kingsley, Ph.D
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Paths of the Ancient Sages: A Pythagorean History Peter Kingsley, Ph.D. n the present article, we follow the trail eventually was transmitted from southern of Pythagorean wisdom as it wends its Egypt back to Persia. Iway from the Greek islands through For him this tradition wasn’t just a the Mediterranean to the world of Sufis and matter of history. He presented himself as its alchemists. Peter Kingsley is an honorary living representative in his own time. And he professor both at the University of New explained that he was the person responsible Mexico and at Simon Fraser University in for bringing it to its fulfillment by returning Canada. Dr. Kingsley believes his work is to it, full circle, to its roots in the East. bring back to life, and make accessible again, The few people in the West who study the extraordinary mystical tradition that lies Suhrawardi nowadays like to believe his forgotten right at the roots of the Western world. vision of the past is strictly symbolic; that his He has worked together with many of the most interpretations of history aren’t to be taken prominent figures in the fields of classics and literally, or seriously. And yet Suhrawardi was anthropology, philosophy and religious studies, very serious about what he said. So were his ancient civilizations and the history of both successors—people who down to the present healing and science. He is the author of In day claim they have perpetuated intact an the Dark Places of Wisdom; Reality; and esoteric tradition based not on theorizing Ancient Philosophy, Mystery, and Magic. or reasoning about reality, but on direct For further information about Dr.Kingsley and his work, visit www.peterkingsley.org. The year: 1191. At Aleppo in Syria a man called Shihab al-Din Yahya al-Suhrawardi was executed on direct instructions from the great Islamic ruler, Saladin. He was thirty- eight years old. His death and short life might seem to have nothing to do with Pythagoras, or the Pythagoreans of ancient Greece. But that’s not the case. Suhrawardi has been known in Persia since his death as “The Sheikh of the East,” or simply as “He who was killed.” While still alive he taught and wrote about how he had discovered a continuous line of esoteric tradition: a tradition that started in the East, Rosicrucian passed to the early Greek philosophers, then Digest was carried from Greece to Egypt where No. 1 Bust of Pythagoras. Roman Copy of a Greek Original. 2009 it traveled a long way up the Nile and Rome, Capitoline Museum. Page 2 experience gained through spiritual struggle Western philosophy is presented and specific techniques of realization. nowadays as strictly a Greek phenomenon, For them this tradition was alive, explainable in Greek terms alone. Claims incredibly powerful. Suhrawardi described it made by ancient sources that the earliest as an eternal “leaven,” capable of transforming philosophers traveled to distant places in whatever it touches, of raising people who search of wisdom are dismissed as romantic are ready into another level of being. And fantasies, dreamed up by Greek writers just as yeast acts subtly but irresistibly— long after the time of the people they were transforming from the inside, unrestrainable, writing about. Historians like to speak about what they call the “Oriental mirage”— the exotic illusion conjured up by Greeks that their culture owed a great deal to the East. But the real mirage is the “Greek mirage,” the illusion that the Greeks grew up in a self-enclosed world of their own. precisely because it’s so subtle—the The trouble is that, in the case of theologians in his time saw that the only way Pythagoras, the reports about him traveling to try and stop his teaching would be to kill far and wide go back more or less to the time him. But they killed nothing. when Pythagoras was alive. Historians like And Suhrawardi, like his successors to speak about what they call the “Oriental among Persian Sufis, was quite precise about mirage”—the exotic illusion conjured up by his ancestors. He mentions two early Greek Greeks that their culture owed a great deal philosophers in particular: Pythagoras, to the East. But the real mirage is the “Greek and a man from Sicily called Empedocles. mirage,” the illusion that the Greeks grew up He also states, as we’ll see, the name of the in a self-enclosed world of their own. town in southern Egypt where the tradition The reality is this: the ancient world eventually arrived. And he gives the name was one vast, interrelated whole. Everything of the man responsible for carrying it out was intimately and subtly interconnected. of Egypt in the ninth century—nearly one You only have to look at what happened and-a-half thousand years after Pythagoras in Pythagoras’s own lifetime and you find and Empedocles. Babylonian astrological traditions being As we’ll also see, he knew what he was introduced into Egypt by Persian Magi. saying. But let’s start at the beginning. Further to the east, the same traditions were being carried by Magi to India. One Vast, Interrelated Whole Everywhere nowadays it’s written or said Those who specialize in the history of that Alexander the Great was responsible classical Greece naturally tend to dislike any for opening up the East, centuries after talk about contacts with the ancient East. It Pythagoras. But that’s just a myth. The can be disconcerting to find that the area one routes that Alexander’s army followed had has given one’s life to studying is nothing but been used by Persian traders and teachers a tiny square on a far vaster chess board, that long before Alexander was even born. the details one has been analyzing are just Then there’s the case of Pythagoras the marks left behind by chess pieces being himself. His home was an island called Samos, moved from somewhere one doesn’t know just off the mainland from what’s now the about to somewhere one doesn’t understand. Mediterranean coast of Turkey. It so happens Page 3 that the people of Samos were among the ancient Persia, for Samos was an island that, specialists of specialists in long-distance from century to century, had the closest of trade. They had a reputation that was almost ties with Persia. mythical in its dimensions for traveling and The realities of history are full of ironies trading. The great temple of Hera on Samos and paradoxes at every turn. With Pythagoras became a storehouse for objects imported the paradoxes start multiplying from the from Syria and Babylonia, from the Caucasus, moment he decided, in around 530 BCE, to Central Asia, and India. leave Samos and settle in Italy. Of all the places that people from Samos The island where he had grown up had did trade with, there’s one in particular that contacts with Egypt; and one would suppose they had close ties with. This was Egypt. They that in leaving Samos for the West he was built their own depots and places of worship leaving those contacts behind. But he didn’t along the Nile, together with other Greeks. leave anything behind. Italy was saturated For them Egypt wasn’t just some foreign or with influences from Egypt. The most exotic land; it belonged to the world they extraordinary finds have been made, there and knew and lived and worked in. in Sicily, like Egyptian magical objects dating And that’s only part of the story. from the seventh century BCE that show the According to an old tradition, Pythagoras’s goddess Isis suckling her son Horus. Their father was a gem engraver. What Pythagoras’s similarities to the imagery of Persephone father did, Pythagoras himself would have suckling her son Dionysus—imagery that learned as a matter of course. But for a Greek depicts the crucial moment in Orphic gem engraver of the time, in the middle of mysteries of initiation when the initiate dies the sixth century BCE, life would have meant to be reborn as Persephone’s child—are far learning skills introduced from Phoenicia too close to be a coincidence. and bringing in materials from the East. Orphic tradition blossomed in Italy. We happen to know about other famous Early Pythagorean tradition absorbed its gem engravers on Samos at the time when language and techniques, made them its Pythagoras was alive. They trained in Egypt; own. And in origin they’re plainly Egyptian. worked for kings of Anatolia; produced some This is particularly clear in the case of the finest works of art right in the heart of of the famous Orphic gold plates that Rosicrucian Digest No. 1 2009 Pythagorean School in Egypt Page 4 originally were buried together with initiates They were placed there during the seventh, in southern Italian tombs. They’re pieces of sixth, and fifth centuries BCE. The strips were folded gold foil, inscribed with directions made by Phoenicians—but they’re engraved for finding one’s way in the world of the with Egyptian images. And they were rolled dead and with promises for obtaining up, like amulets, inside tubes often sculpted immortality. They describe the guardians with pictures of Egyptian gods. Phoenician Influence Traditions have their ebbs and flows, just as cultures do. You won’t find much mention of these People go, whether they strips of gold foil in Phoenician tombs. Most modern historians have little respect for understand why or not, Phoenicians, and disregard them as inferior exactly where they’re needed.