INTRODUCTION
⌀ - Teasing questions
What is history? What is to be human? What is life on Earth?
How did we get here? What are the modern times, in which we already live for some centuries, in the context of universal history?
Could modern times be considered a part of a wider historical phase that started around 6,000 years ago and in which human vices such as greed, ignorance and violence have prevailed?
Could these negative tendencies not have existed or prevailed before, in previous phases of history? When exactly, where and how did history start?
Could the course of universal history go back as far as 60,000 years ago, giving way to a conception of a ‘Long History’?
Could humans in such ancient and primordial times have been mostly free from negative tendencies such as selfishness and violence?
Could the appearance of those limitative tendencies correspond to major transitions in the spiritual perspective of these ancient humans? Could the main spiritual states developed by ancient humans be higher as far back in history as you go?
Could the major transitions in the main spiritual level of human experience be marked by a very broad - but harmonic - cadence or pattern concerning their temporal position? Additionally, could such ‘patterns of duration’ have been perceived by the wisest humans at the time they occurred?
Could the ‘harmonic cadence’ related to the time of these major transitions be somehow encoded in the motions of the Sky? Could the astronomical movement of Precession of the Equinox (related to the slow torque motion of Earth’s axis) be the motion involved in encoding those points of inflection in the said ‘Long History’?
Could the wisest of our ancestors have adequately observed and interpreted the motions of the Sky, so as to unveil the movement of the Precession of the Equinox as this ‘celestial clock’ that mirrors the major changes or spiritual transitions in the human world and, therefore, decoded the mathematical procession of human history?
Could such ‘astro-theo-historiological’ knowledge have been transmitted throughout the millennia of time, only to become an ‘esoteric’ or ‘occult’ knowledge, in the hands of fewer and fewer individuals of each generation?
Could such knowledge have, however, been deciphered and publicly disclosed by the French author René Guénon in the 1930’s, as one of his articles suggests?
Moreover, could the accumulation of knowledge throughout history, including the scientific discoveries made in modern times, be capable of finally confirming, a posteriori, this astro-theo-historiological knowledge?
Are we at the end of the ‘Long History’? What can we know about the obscure time we are living in now?
What is the ontological status of historical knowledge? What could happen if the ‘harmonic cadence’ of history is subject to scientific dissemination and widespread recognizance?
What is the status, for ourselves, of our own biography? Could our true biography be revealed to us in the final encounter with death? Could the compact of historical knowledge be the ‘last major revelation’ made to mankind in the encounter with its own demise?
How can we compensate the Earth and the biosphere for the negative impact we have been inflicting on them for almost 20 000 years already?
Could the revelation of history as an astro-theological knowledge help mankind as a whole to heal and reconcile itself with the living Earth (Gaia), as well as with the Cosmos and the Divine World?
I - Starting from the end of it all: the revelation of one’s biography in near-death experiences
When reflecting about our physical death, one easily comes across the widespread belief that, in the last moments before passing away, our entire life unfolds like a 'flash before the eyes'. Curiously, this belief seems to be confirmed in studies regarding near-death experiences (NDE), connected to the reports of people who experienced close encounters with death or were revived after being considered clinically deceased.
These individuals describe, along other features, going through a review of life in which they experience a brief but vivid recollection of their entire life until then.[1] This suggests that the phenomenon could correspond to an intense activation of the faculty of memory (hypermnesia) or its expansion (panoramic memory), like a moment of assembling, in a ‘luminous constellation’, one’s crucial moments, thoughts and choices.
Such an event could then introduce the subject to a unique conceptual realm, one where its entire life is contemplated as a crystallized ‘spatial-temporal object’ of the mind, akin to a unique and intricate ‘spiritual sculpture’. That is, the synthesis of one’s life could be revealed as a work of art of its own.
And if we envision an individual's life as an analogy to a literary work, the review of life would then be its epilogue, a moment of recapitulation that represents the ultimate conclusion that still belongs to the unity of the individual’s 'book of life'. One could then say that, in that final conclusion, the bio-graphy of one's earthly existence is registered in its definite form.
Moreover, in the accounts of near-death experiences, the review of life is often accompanied by a moment of critique and evaluation regarding the subject's life. Going beyond a simple presentation of life, it is said to also include its interpretation and analysis.
This aspect resonates with the myths found in many spiritual traditions describing a “judgment” or a “weighting of the heart” operated in the initial stages of the Afterlife. Under this point of view, the life-review could be the selection of facts of a particular individual life in order for it to be brought before a “judging eye” - the eye of critical consciousness (that could be equated with the Egyptian concept of the Eye of Ra).
But every judgment needs a criteria. Hence, prior to the unfolding of this ‘trial’, the subject should encounter and comprehend the standard or law that will be applied to his life. - But which law or code is capable of judging or interpreting all life? Is it what the Hindus call Dharma or Rta and the ancient Egyptians named Maat, designating the principle of cosmic order and harmony?
The being who should carry the final criterion for this judgment should also correspond to the ultimate ontological instance of the universe: call it God or Infinite divine being. The last standard of our consciousness could be revealed to be Divine Life itself, which comes to place its seal of identity and difference on the essential aspects of the individual’s life, while providing the subject a direct experience of the Divine Self. This dynamic will correspond to movements of loving approach or a painful distancing of the Divine Self in regards those essential aspects of the individual’s life, in what would be experienced by the subject as an act of rewarding or condemnation, respectively.[2]
Thus, the sketching out of our spiritual biography should retain especially the elements that are relevant to the ‘divine point of view’. Consequently, the essential aspects of the individual’s life may consist in the qualities he demonstrated in his interactions along the main spiritual phases he went through in his life. Additionally, such framework of phases or modulations would operate in the background of our life, without our conscious knowledge, and may follow a certain 'harmonic arrangement'.
That is, during his life, the subject enacts his character in the interaction with the main spiritual phases he is made to go through.[3] In case our acts or deeds are done in a good and harmonic interaction with their respective spiritual phase or modulation, those virtues will supposedly be highlighted in the review of life. The Divine Presence should here introduce blessings, proportional to the ‘merits’ accomplished by the subject. The respective rewards could be experienced in the afterlife in the form of a pouring down of divine peace and bliss (the Hindu ananda), as a receiving of the superabundant Divine Love and a merging with Divine Life. [4]
But in cases of mismanagement of the spiritual modulations, when we enact a poor interaction with the spiritual blessing of a certain age, for example by acting too childishly in the adult age, the effect or outcome of the interaction with the Divine Presence, would be felt like a “purifying fire” and even a rigorous judgment, in which our vices are underlined to our consciousness. Although in the end all things will necessarily be harmonized with Divine Love, we all ought to remember that all the moments of our lives in which we were contextually negligent, when voluntary limitations didn’t allow us to demonstrate a nobler conduct, all will be shown to us, and their memories will be ‘burnt’ or purified ‘before our eyes’. Should we still identify and cling to past misdeeds, we shall also be dragged into that process.[5]
Therefore, it is important to take care about our choices and attitudes because, in the presence of the Divine Self, all your ‘organs’ will be examined, just like in the “show of bones” (or the "dismemberment") experienced by the shamans in their deep trance.[6] Such is one of the possible meanings of the review of life: presenting a lesson of moral improvement, where all eventual evil done is acknowledged, suffered and, lastly, absorbed in the Divine Being that we primarily are.
Therefore, those who ponder the significance of their last encounter with their own life, are likely to feel compelled to be more attentive throughout the rest their earthly life, in order to try to enact only goodness to all things: to God, the Cosmos, the Earth and all its creatures, namely to ourselves, our fellow humans and all life on this planet.
In a nutshell: a review of life is said to happen in the threshold of death and, as reported in many spiritual traditions, could constitute a preparation of the soul for its ‘posthumous states’. But it could also be viewed as a 'rapid image' of our individual life, one that carries the potential to reveal one’s ‘spiritual biography’ as a 'divine constellation'.[7]
II - The “moment of legibility”
These notions concerning the review of life could be transposed from individual level to the whole of the Homo sapiens species, that is, to the unfolding of humanity’s collective life, which constitutes universal history.
Humanity, as the collectivity of human beings, like every living being, ought to have had a birth, a life and will, somewhere in time, go through the experience of death, making it plausible that something analogous to the individual review of life could be experienced by humankind when history is close to its end.
In the individual review of life, we saw that the biography is firstly compiled and subjected to a ‘trial’, with a rewarding or condemning ‘sentence’. If we transpose this concept to humanity as a whole, the result could be a collective rearrangement of historical knowledge and making history itself, our past as mankind, the object of an ‘evaluation’ and ‘appropriation’. Such happening would echo, somehow, the biblical conception of a Last Judgment, because it could be implied, just as in the individual case, that a Divine Presence is “at work” to make such an exercise possible.
If the individual review of life presents the schematic self-knowledge about the main spiritual phases that the subject underwent throughout his life, then the ‘review of life of humankind’ should reveal - to the current humanity oblivious of its past - the main psycho-spiritual modulations it went through along its history, and help us evaluate how we, as a collective, interacted with those challenges.
Additionally, if something like a definitive account of universal history is a possibility at hand in some historical time, it could mean that, in that moment, the review of life is ready and ripe to be revealed to humankind itself. This leads to the question of whether universal history is not already, now, close to the “moment of its legibility”.[8] - Could it be that the time is now ripe for the moment when humanity can be given, as a revelation, the sum of its history as the viewpoint of its 'divine constellation'?
According to Christian tradition, Jesus Christ proclaimed, around 2,000 years ago, that "the times are fulfilled”, and fulfilled means here close to their End. That's why Christ left the expectation in the Early Church that a “Second Coming” was ‘just around the corner’, which had many consequences along the Church’s history (for example in the many millenarian movements that arose).
The period of 2,000 years that have passed since the birth of Christ could relate to a ‘small step’ in the timing of God. Similarly, in the movement of Precession of the Equinox, the position of the Sun in the Equinox ‘steps’ into a new constellation of the Zodiac every nearly 2,000 years (2,160 years to be precise). Could it mean the ‘around the corner’ of the End of Times could be already here?
This assumption of nearness to the End is also in accord with some more contemporary philosophers and poets that regard the modern epoch as a time of disintegration of the collective “organicity” of mankind, revealing a sign or diagnosis of a dying body (and contemporary art could be an expression of this disintegration). - How frightening! - Modernity would then be a ‘hellish state’ (or an infernal topos), that could be similar to the condition of those who, maybe unknowingly, are confronted with the proximity of death as the end of a big cycle. As if the Final Judgement could appear at any time.
In this situation a legitimate act could consist in the fostering of a collective acknowledgment about the course of history, recognizing and condemning the negative trends manifested in certain historical periods, as well as saving or rewarding the positive aspects of the Ages of history. The good deeds that many humans did in the face of the spiritual challenges of their historical contexts should be acknowledged, including the ones accomplished in our present 'Latest Age’. On the other hand, this ‘historical aggiornamento’, should also acknowledge the higher spiritual states that we argue were common in the life of the humans that lived in the first two Ages.
As shall be explained, after the two Early Ages, which ended around 20,000 years ago, more limited psycho-spiritual modulations appeared and trapped humanity in erroneous tendencies in which we have been stuck to since then. In fact, the cognitive limitations that we speculate to have appeared 20,000 years ago (a time we relate to the beginning of mankind's Third Age), paved the way to the gradual emergence of an arrogant ecological egoism. This trait or erroneous tendency started a systematic and enduring damage caused by humans on the harmony of the biosphere and on Mother Earth, which was namely reflected in the mass extinction event the is recorded in the last thousands of years before the end of the Pleistocene era, i.e., around 12,000 years ago.
The next psycho-spiritual limitation, emerging around 6,500 years ago (what we define as the beginning of Fourth Age), led to the appearance of inequity between humans, with all the violence and suffering we have been causing to each other, since then, and until now.
Such are the two major erroneous tendencies or ‘general evils’ with which we still struggle with today: ecological egoism and inequity. They could well be the result of ancient negative interactions by humans with the respective spiritual modulations and challenges of their times. But, because they are contingent, their underlying cognitive limitations are not primary constituents of human beings (although all evil should be made accountable to its respective agent). This means that, through understanding and spiritual practice, we may still have a change to collectively take note of these psycho-spiritual limitations in order to free ourselves from them.
If so, by a comprehensive and collective knowledge of our spiritual limitations, it could be possible to break those ancient vicious circles in which the said erroneous tendencies have entrapped humanity. Such collective ‘spiritual-historical exercise’ of self-criticism could be capable, ultimately, of transforming present human ethics. We humans must come to terms with the collective mistakes made during the Last Ages - and atone for them - if only in the last moments of our history.
Additionally, a mere abstract awareness of the erroneous tendencies and their underlying cognitive limitations is not enough. There is an intense spiritual effort needed to correctly address them and to take into consideration the spiritual accomplishments of the humans of the Early Ages. In this regard, it seems plausible that in the Early Ages (from 65,000 to 20,000 years ago), human beings were not only in harmony with the biosphere and among themselves, but also tended to experience ’divine life in all things’. It could even be speculated that in the First Age, our fellow humans could spiritually reintegrate, without much effort, into the reality of the metaphysical One.
We as a collective may not need to go so far as to require that everyone should re-instate in the ‘primordial spirituality state’ of the First Age. However, if we don't collectively revert or reintegrate into a spiritual state somehow analogous to these ‘early’ spiritual states, in which we were able to see the divine in all things - then we humans will never stop harming the Earth and causing trauma to ourselves.
Moreover, unless present humanity is able of taking the historical process into a ‘standstill’, neutralizing the sting of the historical accumulation of erroneous tendencies, the current path could well lead to the pure and total obliteration of human and natural life on this planet. A realization of the historical-spiritual consciousness that we call the ‘Spiritual Biography of Mankind’ may in fact be the only chance for present humanity to wise up collectively, having the potential to become a source of collective courage and hope in face of the experience of a global and overwhelming ‘phase of death’, or something analogous to it, that we might already be going through or starting very soon.
As a glimpse of the ‘divine constellation’ of human history, the ‘Spiritual Biography of Mankind’ can become something like a spiritual icon, capable of enlightening and healing the generation of the "End of Times" and may eventually become a legacy of historical past for the coming generations of a post-historical humanity, that will live in a new and great period of relief, suspension or destitution of humans' power over the Earth.
III - The quest for universal history
Most of the historiography of our time makes us believe that the flow of history resembles a drifting boat, conceiving it as coming arbitrarily from the processes of biological evolution and mostly considering that mankind has always been at the mercy of the material contingencies, in the face of which we gradually developed technical capabilities. However, such historiography does not achieve, in our view, an adequate interpretation of our past, nor of the moment in which it presents itself.
By raising arbitrariness to the level of a theoretical principle, current historiography repudiates any general plan of history or any conception of a conductive line of history that is not strictly based on material constraints, such as those of a geographical or economic nature. That historiography undoubtedly has a dubious universal value.
However, aspirations of universality in historical matters have also been in action throughout time. In the last millennium, many well-known authors ventured into the quest for universal history and defended the possibility of drafting a plan, pattern or scheme of history that could be synthesized from known historical facts. In this regard, the Arab philosopher Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406) is often referred to as the author who first attempted to write a universal history of mankind in an objective manner, by trying to identify the causes of the rise and fall of the civilizations known in his time.[9]
In the West, the interest in the elaboration of a universal history was alive in the Enlightenment period, with authors such as Giambattista Vico (1668-1744) and Montesquieu (1689-1755) and became a fashionable topic in intellectual circles of the 19th century. The task was taken up again in the 20th century, where H. G. Wells, Oswald Spengler and Arnold J. Toynbee stand out.[10]
Also worthy of mention is the prolific historiographical production made since the 19th century, which intensified in the post-war period, including important discoveries and developments made in diverse fields, such as archaeology and genetic studies. Through these developments, new ways have become open for the pondering about history.
This highlights the possibility that we can be living on a threshold where accumulation of historical knowledge makes it possible to enunciate a reliable schematization of the human past. One should remember that 200 years ago historians completely ignored the idea of a "pre-history", and only 150 years ago, in the XIX century did we start to discover and develop the conception of an Upper Paleolithic age. And much more knowledge has re-emerged since then, after remaining forgotten and hidden for many millennia.
Given the historical and archaeological material discovered in the last centuries, maybe only now, in modern times, can such knowledge be put together again and confirmed objectively. As if we are at a critical threshold and finally have enough pieces of the puzzle on the table to be able to get a glimpse of the “whole picture”.
The aim of this work is to present one such attempt, presenting a plausible macroscopic outline of human history. Not an exhaustive reconstruction of the human past. Its goal is to share a proposition, making it available to the general public as well to the scientific and academic communities.
In order to accomplish the task, and since we will be dealing with the main psycho-spiritual modulations that humans have manifested over time, there is a need to equip ourselves with the adequate intellectual tools. This means a visit to numerous spheres of knowledge, through biological, anthropological, philosophical, and even theological fields. It is an ambitious task, no doubt, but one that seems necessary to achieve the proposed goal.
Under these mottos, let us embark on a quest for the Lady of universal history, celebrated by the ancient Greeks as the Muse named Clio.
SUMMARY OF THE WORK
Part I - Laying the foundations of the “historical building”
The first part of this book sets out the fundamental assumptions of this investigation. These include, in the first place, the epistemological cartography necessary to speak about ourselves as humans and to place ourselves in the universe. Hence, the first chapter of the book deals with metaphysical and cosmological principles, namely the Metaphysical Infinite, the act of Creation and the status of all created beings. Hence, this part delves mostly into theological and philosophical considerations (Part I Chapter I).
Following this highly dense intellectual incursion, we will head on to a chapter concerned with the ‘cosmic placement’ of human life (Part I Chapter II). It begins with an explanatory summary of the process of coming into being of humankind in this universe, going as far back as the emergence of the physical cosmos. Then the question of the origin and nature of biological life on our planet is approached (still today the origin of cellular life is a mystery in modern science).
The development of biological life on Earth led, through evolution, to the appearance of the animal kingdom. Included in this development is the process of hominization from primates from around 2 million years ago and the appearance, circa 200,000 years ago, of anatomically modern humans. That is, they were Homo sapiens, anatomically similar to us, but they were still somehow lacking the human capacity to develop culture and, whence, history.
From there is posed the fundamental problem concerning the question of ‘what is the human being?’ and how the human experience is typified by a fundamentally semiotic event: language.[11]
Language is a semiotic phenomenon. Leading to the need to understand how important semiotic processes are, even in the context of the origins of biological life on Earth. These processes are connected to the notions of information, teleology and, also, semantic meaning, which is the foundation stone of human language.
The historical relevance of language is based on the hypothesis that its discovery could have been an epistemological eureka, an emergence with such a strongly transformative power that it marked the distinction between “anatomically modern humans” and the first fully "modern humans”. These are humans as such, like us, endowed with the ability to receive and create culture and science.
The eureka of language could then well correspond to the beginning of human culture and history and should be placed, according to current archaeological and anthropological data, somewhere between 60 and 70 thousand years ago, in the area of southern Africa.
Given the possible spiritual power of the eureka of language, the spiritual modulation that it defined was of the highest quality. The discoverers of language were not only able to conceptualize spiritual states and qualities, but they could also have developed an epistemology of the world, including an outline of Metaphysics and Cosmological thought, i.e., a science. Their knowledge could be viewed as a primordial wisdom, acquired along tens of thousands of years ago by our ancestors in the first historical age of humanity.
This gives way to the speculation about their possible inquiries regarding the destiny of human beings and about the structure of universal history, namely based on empirical, mathematical and astronomical knowledge that they discovered and developed (Part I Chapter III).
This ancestral knowledge, practically forgotten for a vast number of millennia, was maybe preserved inside the spiritual traditions by underground chains of transmission accessible only to the few people of each generation that can understand them. The concept of philosophia perennis, as it was named since the 16th century in the West, can be one of the code-names regarding such discrete transmission of ancient knowledge. Their followers had an expressed concern in integrative study of the symbolism used in the various spiritual traditions found all over the world.
Finally, it so happened, in the 20th century, that a French author and “traditionalist” philosopher, René Guénon (1886-1951), put forward a unique proposal for the main structure of such ancient knowledge regarding the periodization of universal history, outlined in an article Quelques remarques sur la doctrine des cycles cosmiques, published in 1938.[12]
That article argues that history should be divided into four main ages, which can be classified with the Classical symbolic denominations: Golden - Silver - Bronze - and Iron Age. These four ages are, on one hand, defined by the astronomical rhythm of the Precession of the Equinoxes and, on the other, follow a decrease in duration, according to the sequence 4 - 3 - 2 - 1 (similar to an inverted sequence of the Pythagorean Tetraktys). Guénon’s considerations lead to the following chart as a summary of main periods of human history:
Duration Chronology
Golden Age – 25,920 years - ~63,000 BCE – 37,000 BCE
Silver Age - 19,440 years - ~37,000 BCE - 17,500 BCE
Bronze Age - 12,960 years - ~17,500 BCE - 4,500 BCE
Iron Age - 6,480 years - ~ 4,500 BCE – ?
Could René Guénon, by any chance, have deciphered and published the true schematization of our history? Surprisingly, the chronology he proposes coincides quite well with verifiable transitions in archaeological or historical records, as we were about to find out when we started this quest, as his conception served as guide in the crafting and drafting of the compact universal history presented here.
Part II - The Four Ages and spiritual development
According to the conception exposed by Guénon, the development of history through the Four Ages corresponds to the passing of various human spiritual states in a descending trend, as a gradual regression. Thus, each Age will be defined by a certain degree of spiritual development which is common or typical in the individuals born therein. As the course of the Ages advances, these common spiritual states degrade and become more limited, in a clearly anti-progressive manner.
General spiritual states correspond to complex and multifaceted conditions. Therefore, their description will be made in broad terms. The metaphysical considerations presented in Part I Chapter I will be helpful in this task.
Curiously, if the Ages follow a downward path through the spiritual states, the spiritual development of the individuals living today and in our final Age, should start in the “worst” spiritual state and follow precisely an opposite direction, going “upwards”, through the retaking of the spiritual states of past Ages.
i) The Golden Age (63,000 BCE -37,000 BCE)
As mentioned above, the First Age - symbolically called the Golden Age - corresponds to the period between circa 63,000 BCE and 37,000 BCE. It began with the discovery of language and the profound spiritual effect and implications that such discovery involved.
Language determined a “cognitive revolution” that plausibly took place in the area of South Africa somewhere between 70 and 60,000 BCE. An example is the archaeological evidence discovered in Blombos Cave, near Cape Town. These nomadic hunter-gatherer ancestors developed such skills that allowed them to successfully migrate out of Africa after some millennia.
These tribes of humans jumped first, through the Red Sea, to the Levant and the Arabian Peninsula, then spread along the coast of the Indian Ocean, and ultimately reached the Australian continent around 45,000 BCE.
The transformative power of the eureka of language could be due to the long period of preparation made in the previous phases of hominization and intensifying in the homo sapiens who lived before history, which we name the period of foreshadowing (similar in analogy to the Christian figure of Saint John the Baptist). This whole period was a time in which strong internal and potential forces were accumulated in our biological genus and in the archaic culture it would be already capable of making.
When these forces reached a threshold, a phenomenon of "breaking of the limiting chains" could have come about, explaining the radical change in the epistemological situation of homo sapiens. Not only on the linguistic level, but also spiritually.
The ensuing “cognitive revolution” was the kick-start of history and referred to the spiritual state capable of knowing and identifying the divine principle in this world. In other words, the eureka of language determined the advent of a spiritual state that probably allowed us a permanent contact with the divine element. This spiritual state could be called the primordial state.
This means the linguistic eureka might have come accompanied by an - immediate and spontaneous - cognitive and spiritual illumination or irradiation of the souls of the homo sapiens who experienced it at this time. To put it another way, the development of language could have carried with it the full realization of the human cognitive apparatus.
From the perspective of their way of approaching the world revealed a primordial cognitivity, where everything manifested in the world is seen as the radiation of the Divine Essence, which embraces all things and all beings. The essences of the things belonging to our cosmic environment are interpreted under the direct light of universal intelligence, the Logos. Thus, in the realization of the primordial spiritual state, all things can be recognized and experienced as sacred symbols of Transcendent Reality. The contemplation of the world is done from the "perspective of Eternity".
In the case of human beings this cognitivity has a linguistic nature and, given the particular communicative ability of language, the primordial state could be shared among peers. This collective sharing possibility is our main distinction: although the primordial state can also theoretically happen to any particular being (and therefore in any animal being), it does so only in a single individual or a limited number of individuals of a species. In the case of humans, we are able to bring others nearer to our spiritual state through the faculty of language. Additionally, it makes possible the accumulation of knowledge and culture, opening the way for the construction, not only of a historical becoming of mankind, but also the development of science (providing a basis to consider the possibility of a primordial wisdom). For it should be noted that, despite the human dispersal throughout the terrestrial world which occurred since this First Age, the development of such a “primordial wisdom” must have been a common characteristic of all human groups, as something inherited from the original groups where language emerged. It is enough that the dispersed groups of humans maintained a common understanding of the fundamental principles of such primordial wisdom, for us to consider that we are dealing with a common and somehow homogeneous body of cultural knowledge, that is, a scientific community.
Let us not overlook the metaphysical value and magnitude that this primordial spiritual state of mankind could have represented in the context of the physical universe at large. If biological life on Earth plausibly constitutes a cosmic singularity, the primordial state of the human species - as a possible culmination of the million-year process of biological evolution - may represent a coming together of the creatures of this world with the divine plane of the Creator. Thus, to say that the human beings who experienced this primordial state are similar to gods, may, in fact, not be an exaggeration.
Furthermore, one could here consider humans' “double singularity”: along the singularity of biological life in the Universe is added singularity of human semiosis and history. This makes conceivable the following:
a) there is a precise correlation between human order and the astronomical order;
b) that the Golden Age began in a specific cosmological configuration;
c) that the correlation between human order and the astronomical order can follow a celestial movement such as the Precession of the Equinoxes;
d) lastly, the knowledge of these heavenly movements could have been part of the primordial wisdom harnessed by the humans during this first age.
This chapter will endeavor to present a realistic and anthropological account of these ancient ancestors, their slow spread on Earth and their lifestyle. Also approached is the idea that the main worldly activities of these nomadic hunter-gatherers implied a strong integration with their high spiritual sensitivity.
Additionally, throughout the circa 26,000 years of the Golden Age (fulfilling a whole cycle of Precession of the Equinoxes),[13] the intensity of their high spiritual experience may have gradually diminished, their “spiritual temperature” gradually getting colder, paving the way for the second historical age, or the Silver Age, where a less lofty spiritual state became the common reference for the human experience.
Nonetheless, the idea that the end of the Golden Age resulted from a “Fall of Man”, like the one recounted in the biblical Genesis, is refutable. The argument for it is that the perfection of the humans of this Age was indefectible, leading to the necessary conclusion that the end of our First Age was the fruit, not of a sin or irregular act, but the result of a conscious well-founded act. One could conceive, for example, that there was a collective decision to make a ‘sacrifice’ out of themselves, through which they renounced - or concealed - their perfection to give way to the realization of different, less divine, modulations of human lives.
ii) The Silver Age (37,000 BCE -17,500 BCE)
The Second or Silver Age, was characterized by the advance over humanity of a very thin obscurement of the cognitive apparatus (a “veil of ignorance”, that Hindus and Buddhists call the “veil of Maya”). This “cognitive cloud” has prevented humans, since this time, from spontaneously recognizing the aforementioned primordial state.
Since this Age, the constant contact with the divine element of the primordial state ceased, leading humans away from naturally recognizing themselves as "cosmic centers".
This situation was manifested in the individual consciousness in the human groups, meaning a dualistic and fragmented reality where the being identifies itself as a limited “I” or “ego”, separate from the involving cosmos.
Although made distinct from the cosmos, the individuality of the ancient humans may have been still in a pristine state, structured in an active and dynamic polarization between the individual sphere and the divine components. Their individuality and its respective “prototype” were, so to say, "consolidated", making them sovereign creatures, inducing a classification of their spiritual state as integrated individuality.
Because of their purity, the “Argentean” humans would be prune to have been balanced beings, fair and just between themselves and respectful - if not devoted - to natural harmony and to all life.
Plausibly they did not have disturbed thoughts, nor did they commit major ethical mistakes between themselves and with their ecological environment (although there could have been exceptions to this norm).
On a more “terrestrial level”, crucial to the understanding of the Silver Age is the appearance of the Upper Paleolithic (the whole of which spans between circa 37,000 BCE to 11,000 BCE).
The Upper Paleolithic corresponds to the first archaeological human cultures found in Europe, namely the Aurignatian and the Gravettian cultures. The Upper Paleolithic marks a jump in the sophistication of man-made artifacts, such as tools, weapons, ceremonial objects, and the creation of new expressions, such as rock art and burial with the presence of symbolic offerings. Therefore, the Silver Age seems to have come with a release of human artistic expression, evident in the appearance of figurative representation.
The art of the Silver Age is viewed today as carrying out functions in line with hunter-gatherer spirituality we denote even today. These included ritually inducing natural and human fertility, enacting sympathetic hunting and shamanic-healing magic, as well as a ritual and totemic-mythical representation. These functions should bear continuity with proto-shamanic activities that we can speculate were elaborated already during the Golden Age.
However, in the Silver Age, the rites should have been seen as a necessity for the maintenance of cosmic order, and not a pure emulation of the divine, as could be the case in the Golden Age.
Nevertheless, their state of integrated individuals constituted a solid platform from which their perfection could become complete, with the reestablishment of the primordial state through the petition and harvesting of divine grace - in a spiritual process that we call deification. They, therefore, developed tools and methods for invoking, accumulating, and applying spiritual gifts to permanently transform their cognitive apparatus back into the primordial cognitivity.
Such methods of initiation left evidence, for example, in the cave art of the Aurignacian culture (c. 37,000 BCE - 25,000 BCE). They could well be the expression of complex rituals that put into action forces and symbols aimed at bringing about a spiritual rebirth of the initiates, that is, the restoration of the primordial state. In this regard, Chauvet cave, in South of France, is probably the most complete and well-preserved example of the complexity and spiritual depth of their rituals.[14]
Nevertheless, given the law of spiritual decline, throughout the duration of the more than 19 millennia of the Silver Age (3/4 of the cycle of Precession of the Equinoxes), the spiritual potency of these individuals gradually weakened. The intensity and aspiration to connect to the realm of the divine diminished, leading them to understand only fragments of the primordial wisdom they kept. Thus, the restoration of the primordial state became less and less frequent and appealing.
In the end, even the knowledge of a prior Golden Age, although present, became obscure, shining dim in their minds, like the dim light of the night stars. In this condition, only partial elements of the primordial wisdom were preserved by the many tribes scattered around the Earth. The spiritual state of integrated individuality persisted, but at its utmost weakest (becoming vulnerable to being breached, as it was, in the following Age).
In the end of this Second Age, that is, at the transition point between the Silver Age and the Bronze Age, humankind stood on a razor's edge: sovereign yet left “uncultivated” by the divine. We stood on a fine balance, between two forces: the ascending, leading to the cultivation of divine grace; and the descending, leading to the reckless investment in individuality. Humankind was left to its fate, to a new type of freedom, now determined by deficient knowledge, denoting a propensity to dive into individuality alone.
This end point defines an equilibrium corresponding to an important metaphysical position, as it constitutes the marker of the spiritual state that is common to animal life. Animals fulfill their proper sovereignty or majesty, naturally. That is, it is argued, the essence of animality. This natural perfection is equivalent to stating that there is a realization, by all animals, of their “terrestrial or individual prototype”, equivalent, as we shall see, to the realization of the “natural beatitude” referred by Dante. That means that, unlike us, non-human animals aren't normally able of marching far in the ascending path of spiritual enlightenment, nor to fall very deep into egoism, as we easily are.
Humans can therefore go below the threshold of the normal animal condition, realizing an infra-animal state when they fall into sin or into selfishness, as was somehow bound to happen on a historical level by inducing the introduction selfishness in our collective destiny, a mistake which we humans bear from that time to this day.
iii) The Bronze Age (17.500 BCE - 4.500 BCE)
The Third Age or Bronze Age (with a span of 1/2 of the cycle of Precession of the Equinoxes) can be divided into two halves: from circa 17,500 BCE to 11,000 BCE, corresponding to the fate of hunter-gatherers in the last phase of the Ice Age, and from circa 11,000 BCE to 4,500 BCE, with the development of the Neolithic civilizations. Although, in our view, they all shared a common spiritual state, in the first half a negative trend was accentuated, whereas, in the second half, compensatory or positive forces were put in place. Hence, the two periods should be described separately.
The beginning of this Age (around 17,000 BCE) coincided with the glaciation maximum, the coldest time of the last Ice Age. This coldness may symbolize the descending in the egoistic direction that may have started its development at this time.
The humans in whom the selfish tendency prevailed mixed with the humans that maintained their integral individuality. This reminds us of the ‘Parable of the Weeds’ (Matthew 13:24-43) where the good and the evil herbs are said to co-exist until the “harvest” (which symbolizes the “Final Judgement”). The result of this mixture was a leveling down of the common spiritual state, resulting in a “normal” spiritual state as one of weak individuality (hence their main spiritual challenge was to fulfill a process of consolidation to restore the state of integrated individuality).
Here truly began the corruption of mankind (“the Fall”) and the "cosmic order" was, by consequence, disturbed. This becomes evident if we relate it to the appearance of the idea of human dominance, in particular over the natural, and to its ecological consequences.
The sense of dominance over nature must have been a tempting idea, given the now fully grown mastery of the activity of hunting (possibly connected with the discovery of bow and arrow). But there is misery here: self-centeredness was, in fact, evidence of a defective will that led to the practice of irregular or sinful acts, thus leading to the emergence of the category of ecological egoism.
Following the so-called overkill theory, it is plausible that excessive hunting by humans in the last thousands of years of the Ice Age paved the way for the mass extinction of the megafauna in Euro-Asia. Such disturbing impacts on the ecological systems attributed to our species persisted since these times throughout the millennia.
Around 11,000 BCE, half-way through the Third Age of mankind, the last Ice Age came to a relatively fast end, along with such a significant rise in sea levels that it could, with precision, be described as a universal Flood. The punitive character of the myths of the Flood that we find in various traditions adequately addresses the predominance of a sinful nature in these humans.
Not surprisingly, after the end of the Ice Age, the hunter-gatherer groups and their lifestyle seem to have stagnated - as was the case of the so-called western hunter-gatherers of Mesolithic Europe - ultimately becoming historically irrelevant, i.e., with such a lifestyle reduced to being a mere form of obsolete archaism.
In the second half of the Bronze Age, however, something new began to emerge, in places that had not been very much noticed until then. Beginning around 10,000 BCE in Anatolia (Göbekli Tepe and, after, Çatalhöyük) and in the Levant (Jericho) we observe the establishment of sedentary lifestyle and of agriculture, along with the rise of Neolithic civilization with its own spiritual traits.
Their religious form of spirituality seems to have had a special emphasis on humility and devotion, which can be considered as a compensation for the “bronze man's” sinful tendencies. Thus, through the spirituality of the neolithic traditions, some re-balancing of the negative tendencies seems to have been achieved, as if a “New Covenant” with the divine, symbolized by the rainbow, was established with humankind, similar to the story of Noah.
However, the idea of dominance over nature remained and deepened, evidenced, for example, in the domestication of animals (until then only dogs had been domesticated), almost solely as a means of food.
Some could argue that the continuation of the paradigm of domination over nature was minimized and determined by a human need for survival (food production) and, therefore, was a lesser or necessary “evil”. This would explain the “sanction” of the sedentary way of life by many spiritual traditions. Nevertheless, the domination over animals and the natural world, without caring about the balance of surrounding ecosystems, signals the continuation of the corrupted nature of this human generation, gradually eroding the connection to the divine plane.
iv) The Iron Age (from 4.500 BCE until today)
The weakening of individuality in the Bronze Age points to the idea that the forces of inequity were already at work then. But in the macro-history of the Fourth Age or Iron Age, there is such a profusion of the horrible scourge of inequity, that it makes us suspect this could be its most important feature.
In effect, beyond all the positive creations or productions of sedentary man, the emergence of developed civilizations of the Iron Age, since the first ones in Mesopotamia, meant above all invasions, wars, slavery, exiles of peoples, ethnic destruction, among other atrocities. - Misery, misery, misery!
When humanity reached 1.200 BCE, the middle point of this Age, there were already signs of a deep "civilizational fatigue" over most of the civilized world, evidenced by the so-called “Bronze age collapse” of Mesopotamia or the Greek "little dark age" that occurred from around 1.200 BCE until 800 BCE.
Then came the so-called “axial period”[15] between 800 BCE and 200 BCE, with important intellectual creations, such as: the Upanishads in India, the works of the philosophers in Greece, of Confucius and Lao-Tse in China, Zoroaster in Persia, Buddhism, the Hebrew Bible, the Roman jurisconsults, the Babylonian astrology, etc. All of these appeared in this period and manifested a tendency for integrative thought, where “philosophers go out on the street” to teach others and learn from them.
But this tendency for intellectuality has been a concern of a minority of people. On the systemic global level, the paradigm of self-empowerment, domination and human-to-human violence prevailed and thrived, never stopping until our day. This prevalence of violence leads one to the conclusion that in the Iron Age there was an extreme limitation of the human cognitive apparatus, creating a process of decay which could be called degeneration.
In this traumatic context, most people tend to separate spheres of their psyche to carry on with their lives. Although they are disturbed by the level of violence around them, they tend to “submerge” this feeling to be able to cope with the difficulties they have, in order to survive and have a taste of fulfillment and happiness. Therefore, the common spiritual state of our Age could be one of fragmented individuality.
To compensate for this defect, we see the rise of organized religions, which tried to provide a “regular framework of behavior” for individual and collective living, healing them in the face of their adverse context. Therefore, one could say that the main spiritual challenge of our Age is one of regeneration or the healing of our psycho-spiritual wounds.
All religions of the developed civilizations that appeared supply some sort of spiritual guidance - from the first, such as the Sumerian tradition, up to the latest religions, such as the Baha'i. Their guidance has given a significant, although sometimes indirect, access to the divine plane. Additionally, it should be noted, religious institutions, being human productions, degrade naturally over time.
In Modernity, which should correspond with the last phase of the Iron Age - and of the whole cycle of history in our perspective, we find even a corrosion of the boundary supplied by organized religions, allowing irregular behavior to blossom. That is why we find in modern times a conceptualization of religious and civil liberties which assumes that all behavior is potentially permissible. This explains why easy pleasures, illusions and manipulation became widespread and have had a strong impact on large population aggregates.
The theme of the “unconscious” and its impulses seems to have a special significance in this epoch, as parts of the brain network of common individuals are in an isolated and passive state. Only a few individuals seem able to resist this dissociation and set their intention on an adequate process of reintegration (could this be the Jungian idea of “making the unconscious conscious”?).
Thus, it becomes plausible that modernity is a period of disintegration, a sign of the dying ‘body of humanity’. Such infernal topos carries all sorts of systemic or dynamic implications on a global societal level and announces a critical phase from which, either an orderly “fractal pattern” emerges and brings about a new balance to the forces of inequity, or there could be no escaping the unfolding destructive powers emerging from the “chaotic sphere”.
Part III - History as an icon of salvation and remembrance
The understanding of this proposal of a Spiritual Biography of Mankind might, in many ways, be useful for humanity in the present “moderno-hellish” situation. The knowledge of our past in a brief and critical description can help acknowledge how far away humanity has become from its origins, providing an “ark of salvation” over the present “troubled waters”, a platform unto which individuals can hold for their personal spiritual safety and health.
Furthermore, the Spiritual Biography of Mankind could help congregate the spiritual warriors in their “good fight” to resist and neutralize the forces of inequity and eco-selfishness on a global scale. This process could ultimately lead to the re-establishment of world of just and integrated individuals (the common state of humanity until the transition point between the Silver and Bronze Ages), in which humanity if fully devoted to restoring the Earth and the biosphere back to its pristine state, that is, back into a terrestrial paradise.
If, finally, a post-historical world is put in place, for which a political configuration ought to be conceived as soon as possible, the Spiritual Biography of Mankind may serve as a lesson and an icon of remembrance of what and how historical times were, for such a destiny not to be repeated again.
Moreover, many works of art can be created from the macro-landscape of the Spiritual Biography of Mankind, making it conceivable that post-historical humans will come to dedicate themselves mainly to the art of iconning the prysms of human history.[16]
Pedro Semper
20.5.2022
Notes:
[1] Vd. David Lorimer, Resonant Mind: Life Review in the Near-Death Experience, 2017.
[2] May it be that what is revealed to the subject in its final glimpse, is the way his own life is seen by the Divinity, or what is presented to His Eternity, in the perspective “sub specie aeternitatis”? We read in St Paul: "Now we see things as in a mirror and in a confused way. On that day we will see them face to face. Now my knowledge is imperfect, but on that day I will know as God knows me" (I Cor 13:12).
[3] Life events could be seen as a result of the combination of outer surroundings and the inner expression of the individual, making up life's becoming. The surroundings, or the individual’s environment, also include the spiritual phases as their essential framework, and could be equated with the alchemical Mercury. The dimension of expression, regards how we interact throughout those environment-ages, revealing the inner will, equated with the alchemical Sulfur.
[4] Beyond that, to the most blessed souls, even Divine Wisdom can be realized, sealing the final transformation or reintegration of the subject into his “supra-individual modes of being”. This transformation can also be seen as a "principial reabsorption or contraction" of the individual reintegrated in his immediate principle of formal manifestation or archetype. Vd. René Guénon, L'Homme et son devenir selon le Vêdânta, 1925, XIX.
Such achievement could also have been associated with the heroic, and the realization of what was called the kouros, or “youthful state” of the initiate. Vd. Peter Kingsley, In the Dark Places of Wisdom, 1999.
[5] The idea of condemnation of the subject translates the difficulty that he will experience in standing before that sovereign mirror of truth that is the Divine Presence, and the petrifaction of horror that may occur here is the result of our clinging to naughty deeds and habits, making the last seconds of life seem like a sort of “perpetuity in Hell”.
Furthermore, one suffers for what one has done in his review of life and will suffer again in future lives lived in other parts of the multiverse, if the lessons are not fully absorbed. That is, if the deficiencies highlighted in the judgment of this life are not all assimilated, logically those subjects will have to live other lives in inferior realms, maybe even below the divine threshold of the animal plane. Because, in general, animals have no evil and are integrated beings. Therefore, in the case of man, restoring the animal nature can mean to restore such original innocence (although it does not yet correspond to the most “blessed state”, where divine mysteries are revealed).
[6] In the deep trance of the shamans, the phase of dismembering or decomposing of the flesh and the members, gives way to a moment of examination of the nucleus or bone structure of the body of the shaman, and the reconstruction of that body by the “deities” of the respective organs. Therefore, the process of “dispersion” of the flesh, gives way to the path of restoration of the true subtle body by the “shaman ancestors” or, in other cultures, the “Gods”. Vd. Mircea Eliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, 1951, chap. II. And Phillip C. Grotte, Ice Age Art and the Bear Cult, 2015, p. 134.
In this “show of bones”, the knowledge of the divine power that is the attribute of each “organ”, is conceded to the shaman or initiated priest. The Egyptians, for example, thought the saying of the names of the Gods by the priest could ritually operate this kind of healing, or at least that was how it was taught by the Neo-Platonists (vd. Algis Uzdavinys, Philosophy and Theurgy in Late Antiquity, 2010).
One can see this process over the body as its “Osirification”, or of a “principial contraction” of the individual to the point one sees the divine powers of which the different organs of the body are “made of” or correspond to. Osiris, like Dionysus and Orpheus, had his body dismembered and reconstructed. Their “subtle body” could also have similarities with the symbology of the Body of Christ, which is exposed on the Cross for ‘everyone to see’. Additionally, like the egyptian Pharaohs, the body of Jesus, before being buried, could also have been subjected to an (abridged) process of “mummification”, leaving us the reliquary of the Holy Shroud in which he was ‘embalmed’ (Mt. 27:57-60).
[7] The 'rapid image' and the 'constellation' are concepts of Walter Benjamin's theory of the 'dialectical image', referring to a figure that emerges from the dialogue or tension between the ‘now’ and historical past. See Giorgio Agamben, The Time that Remains: A Commentary on the Letter to the Romans, 2005, Tornada.
[8] Benjamin's concept of the 'now of legibility' refers to the ‘recognizability’ of the present as well as the historical past. See Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, complied in 1999, chap. N, p. 463, and Theses on the Philosophy of History, 1942.
Also, on the subject of knowledge about the “present time”, is the invective of Jesus in the Gospel according to Luke (12:54-59): "When you see a cloud rising in the evening, immediately you say, 'Rain is coming,' and so it is. And when the south wind blows, you say, 'It is going to be very hot,' and so it is. Hypocrites, if you can discern the appearance of the earth and the sky, why can you not discern the present time? Why do you not judge for yourselves what is right?"
[9] The title of Ibn Khaldun's work, Muqaddimah, written in 1377, can be translated as "An Introduction to History".
[10] Very briefly, H.G. Wells, The Outline of History, 1920, advocated a view of history that was guided by the idea of progress. Oswald Spengler, The Decline of The West, 1918, argued that civilizations, like living organisms, had a limited duration in time and went through certain phases of growth and decline. Arnold J. Toynbee, A Study of History, 1934-1961, tried to explain the decline of civilizations as the result of spiritual, intellectual and creative decadence.
[11] As we shall see, the act of signification, that defines language, frees the conceptual capacities, allowing humans to expand their knowledge to magnitudes of surprising complexity and depth, making us capable of creating objective science about reality and the world.
[12] René Guénon, Quelques remarques sur la doctrine des cycles cosmiques, Études Tradicionnelles, Paris, Oct-1938. This article first appeared in the Journal of Indian Society of Oriental Art, June-December 1937, dedicated to Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy, on the occasion of his 60th birthday.
[13] The Golden Age lasted an entire cycle of the Precession of the Equinoxes, that is, about 26,000 years. This complete revolution of the sun's equinoctial position is easily represented as a centered circumference, ʘ, which is a fairly universal representation of perfection, used as the alchemical symbol of gold and the astrological symbol of the sun. It can also represent a circumscribed space, associated with the concept of Paradise, which etymologically refers to an "enclosed garden". It is also a symbol, for the Pythagoreans, of the monad, and through which they designated the Metaphysical Infinitude.
[14] The state of preservation of Chauvet cave is due to the fact that, after starting to be used for ritual purposes in the first millennia of the Silver Age, around 34,000 BCE, it became isolated from the world in circa 30,000 BCE due to a landslide that closed its entrance, until its discovery in the 20th century. This meant that, unlike other caves, the paintings in Chauvet were not mixed with later stylistic elements, keeping intact the symbolic and functional composition of the cave.
[15] Karl Jaspers, Origin and Goal of History, 1949, Ch. 1.
[16] This affirmation draws close to the concept of the “redeemed night” of Walter Benjamin, where, beyond the “daylight” of history, it is art and aesthetic that become the spring of life for human collective life. “Works of art, then, may be models of a nature that awaits no day, and thus no Judgment Day; they are models of a nature that is neither the theater of history nor the dwelling place of man. The redeemed night.” (in Walter Benjamin, Letter to Florens Christian Rang (1923), Selected Writings, Harvard University Press, 2002).
For inquiries, contact: spiritualbiographyofmankind@gmail.com