New Dawn Interview With Tobias Churton
July 1, 2005 By
By RICHARD SMOLEY
—
Tobias Churton is one of today’s most lively and spirited investigators of that underground stream of the Western tradition known as Gnosticism. He first became interested in the Gnostics while reading for a degree in theology at the University of Oxford in the 1970s.
Soon after leaving, he became interested in exploring these ideas for television. “I’d got it into my head that there had never been any religious television – only programmes about religion,” he later recalled. “I had written a paper on the subject which recommended a new kind of television for this most neglected area, something on the lines of television, a kind of programme which would enter into the very nature of the religious experience and not simply observe it.” Churton got his opportunity in the mid-1980s, when he produced a series on the Gnostics for British television. To accompany his series, he wrote his first book, The Gnostics, a history of this elusive esoteric movement from early Christianity to modern manifestations in such figures as Giordano Bruno and William Blake, and even in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
In the years since then, Churton has pursued and deepened his appreciation for the Western esoteric traditions. He was the Founder Editor of Freemasonry Today magazine, and during the last year has published two new books. The Golden Builders: Alchemists, Rosicrucians, and the First Freemasonsexplores the background of Masonry from its antecedents in the alchemical and Hermetic traditions of antiquity through its modern manifestations. His latest book, Gnostic Philosophy: From Ancient Persia to Modern Times, casts an even wider net, tracing the Gnostic heritage from its roots in Zoroastrianism, Mithraism, and the Essenes to the 20th century magus Aleister Crowley and manifestations of gnosis in pop culture. Churton currently makes his home in Britain.
– Richard Smoley
– Richard Smoley
How exactly would you describe gnosis? What does it mean to you?
How would I describe gnosis? I should like to describe gnosis as the experience of knowing or having intimacy with what we call God. God, the Bible tells us, wishes to be known. The word ‘Gnostic’ – one who has experienced gnosis – was first used as a nickname by those who opposed the whole idea or thought it was all too much for human beings to claim.
In a way, it really is the most enormous act of cheek to say that one has had experience of God! John’s Gospel for example says that “no man hath seen God at any time.” Hospitals for the mentally sick are full of people who claim the most extraordinary intimacy with powers beyond themselves. In the Gnostic tradition broadly, sanity or peace of mind is a fruit of gnosis. And ‘sanity’ means becoming clean, or ‘whole’ so there is a moral as well as a physical and psychological dimension to be considered. It might be argued that one has got to share in Christ to know God. But clearly there has been gnosis outside of the Christian tradition. So God obviously wants to be known by everyone!
Gnosis to me personally means receiving a gift – a gift that carries with it certain responsibilities. It’s quite a heavy thing to be lightened – or enlightened! There’s a lot we carry that prevents us from rising and growing in divine knowledge. For me, gnosis means a love of truth, a sensitivity to the magical aspects of life, and above all, a permanent struggle with material consciousness. People would rather see a person burnt than their own money burnt. That, we would say, is only natural. Politicians are adept at appealing to us on this level. Being gnostic does involve an unusual attitude to the natural order. The merely human in us does come under scrutiny – the light shows up the shadows and darkness in us, if you like. Obviously, no one likes being ‘shown up’, so we persecute the light-bringers and hide ourselves behind images of who we think we are. Gnosis is light and, if I may say so, “my burden is light.”
Is it possible to experience gnosis for oneself?
I obviously believe it is possible to experience gnosis for oneself. One could hardly experience it for other people! But the experience changes and one might not always be aware that one is experiencing gnosis. It is not a single state. It is not the same as ‘instant satori’. The universe itself is a projection of gnosis, if limited. I should say that if one has no experience of gnosis, one can hardly say one has been truly alive.
Could you explain a little about the Gnostic schools of antiquity, and what happened to them?
There were many Gnostic schools in late antiquity, as far as we can tell, surrounding some particular teacher, or the self-proclaimed followers of such a teacher. They had visions, dreams, statements, stances and orders of followers. Some were probably charlatans and some ‘the real thing’, as one would expect.
The orthodox Christian teachers who made it their business to denigrate and destroy the Gnostic movement in the Church always tended to isolate the teacher. Naming names was a big part of the anti-Gnostic propaganda. Thanks to their efforts, we have some dim records of men like Basilides, Carpocrates, Marcus, Marcion, Valentinus, Simon Magus, Dositheos. The orthodox apologists Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Epiphanius and Tertullian, for example, made it their business to present these Gnostic teachers as demented quacks leading their followers into what Irenaeus called – in about 180 CE – “an abyss of madness and blasphemy.” I don’t know how seriously one can take their presentations of the evidence. It’s a bit like asking George Bush whether he prefers Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band to Revolver!
The Gnostics represented a kind of counter-culture and therefore exposed themselves to persecution and ridicule. You can’t imagine Gnostics wandering around in suits and ties with briefcases talking about real estate values! Some seem to have met in catacombs and private places. There were Gnostics in the first ever monasteries of Saint Pachom in the Thebaid of Egypt. Indeed, it is arguable that the first monastic movement was chiefly inspired by the desire for a place to get away from the world and experience God, i.e.: a Gnostic inspiration. Clearly the monasteries have always had a special role in promoting authentic spiritual life, if usually in secret. The walls had ears.
Sadly, the British and German Reformations, in attacking the monasteries in the name of the Protestant tendency, tended to throw the baby out with the bath-water, so the position of today’s Gnostic has some kinship with that of the early Christian Gnostics. Where do we go?, they might ask. San Francisco obviously didn’t work for everyone!
However, as we know from the story of the Nag Hammadi Library, even in the desert monasteries the Gnostics were not safe. Official visitations weeded out the offending literature and condemned it to the flames. Soon the offending Gnostics would meet the same fate. The Church hooked up with the State in the 4th century CE and the true Gnosis was exiled. Just one good reason to keep religion out of politics!
How did this Gnostic legacy survive after the end of the old Gnostic schools? What sort of heritage did they bestow on our civilisation?
Thanks be to God, the Gnostic experience and challenge did just survive the end of the Roman eagle’s flight. As one might expect, it survived on the fringes of the old Empire – in Syria, Iraq, Bulgaria, Turkestan and Bosnia – possibly Ireland. Even, for a while, in Mongolia and China. The flame was kept alive through untold numbers of military campaigns, massacres and violent conflicts of kings, sultans, demigods, semi-gods, dictators and emperors. It was carried into the bosom of the Islamic Empire after the 7th century in the form of Hermetic philosophy as an inspiration to science and philosophy – examining God in His works and wonders. The Sabians of Harran – who were not Muslims but Sabians and permitted by the Koran – their role is extraordinarily important in keeping the flame alive.
The appearance of Islamic mysticism – or rather, gnosis – among the so-called Sufis in the ninth and tenth centuries was highly significant. Magic, philosophy, science, mysticism – in short, human progress, were fostered by the enlightened circles of the Islamic world – always playing, it should be noted, a kind of shadow-boxing game with the hard-line authorities who cared as little for personal experience of the divine kingdom as did the Roman Church in the west.
The annihilation of the so-called ‘Cathars’ in southern France and northern Italy in the 13th century showed just how far the authorities were prepared to go in attempting to destroy spiritual existence that was not controlled by the status quo – the ever-present authorities we find in every age: the manifest powers of invisible spiritual opposition, as the Gnostic sees it. The Gnostics have been the light of the world and the leaven in the bread. A world without gnosis would be a very dark place indeed. The Gnostic greets the Sun, the ‘visible god’. He or she is first to see the dawn – first, you might say, in the garden of resurrection.
Some scholars suggest that the term “Gnostic” is too problematic to be valuable, and should be replaced by something else. Do you agree?
Some scholars, you say, suggest the term ‘Gnostic’ is too problematic and should be replaced. Well, I’m sorry for them. Gnosis itself will always be problematic in this world. The day it fits cosily into some scholar’s dictionary will be the day it has ceased to have power. No, ‘Gnostic’ – like ‘Christian’ – began as a nickname and like all such names should be borne with pride in a blind world. Yes, there are problems of definition. In 1966 there was a Colloquium of scholars at Messina intended to define the term ‘Gnosticism’, but it could not hold the term down. So I, without even the benefit of the Italian sun, cannot do it for you in this interview. The subject could fill a book. There is, however, another tack we can follow. That is, Why should it be defined? Definition – like a census – leads to control. Much better that the Gnostic tradition bears the unique quality of resisting definition! There is no doubt that the issue has been muddied by the activities of the Christian churches that dominate thinking in the West to a greater degree than we perhaps realise.
When I was a student at Oxford University for example, it took me a long time to realise the full implications of the fact that the Theology courses were run by church leaders chiefly for their benefit. Admittedly, it would have been odd if they had been run by industrial chemists! But the point was that ‘Gnosticism’ for example dealt with a universal experience in terms only of its presence or exile from the orthodox Christian Church. Theologising it denied its root in authentic experience. If we cannot trust our deepest most personal and absolutely authentic experience, what can we trust? Anyhow, it would have been better, I think, in retrospect, to study the entire field of Gnostic philosophy, religion and so on as a stream of its own that interpenetrates – necessarily – with all of the so-called ‘great religions’ of the world.
One of the interesting things about the orthodox Church – if we may for just a second see the plethora of conflicting bodies as a broad unity – is that it finds it can eventually accommodate everything – everything, that is, except gnosis! By this I mean that Darwin was more or less accepted by the Church of England by the time of World War One. Church leaders – by no means all, I know – made accommodations with Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini and – let’s face it, the Church has pretty well made its peace with the world. Gnostic types do not find themselves in such a comfortable position with regard to the world as it is.
There are many people who are on the road to gnosis who perhaps do not realise it, who out of love of God and fear of God – and fear of themselves and others – find themselves wasting years in very unsatisfactory Church gatherings which – in the name of God – demand their sacrifice and allegiance. I’ve always found that it was the most selfish groups that preached self-abnegation.
But to get back to the point, what other tame word could replace the tattered glory and battered bread of the words Gnostic, Gnosis – even that scholars’ word ‘Gnosticism’? Mysticism is too misty. Magick has been bowdlerised and Disneyfied. Spirituality – well! It used to have meaning, now it means anything and probably nothing. It’s only a matter of time before car manufacturers come up with a car that meets your spiritual needs! I really don’t know what people mean when they talk about ‘spirituality’. It’s so vague as to be useful to every pseudo-religious charlatan and greedy politician in the world! When you say ‘Gnostic’, you always have to explain it. And when you do, people are always fascinated, whether they admit it or not! So that’s what we’ve got and we have to make the best of it. Gnosis means knowledge. Get it?
What do you make of current attempts to revive Gnosticism? What value do they have?
You ask about recent attempts to revive Gnosticism. This is a difficult question for people like myself who prefer authentic experiences with some real history attached. This is the scholar and antiquarian in me speaking. My path is not your path.
I don’t believe ‘Gnosticism’ – that word really refers to the Gnostic groups that came into conflict with Christian orthodox authorities in the first five centuries of the known life of the Christian Church – can or needs to be ‘revived’. The patient is not dead – though the world might well be. “The dead are not alive,” as the Gnostic gospel has it, “and the living will not die.” This is my personal favourite among the many great Gnostic logia. The dead are not alive and the living will not die. How true.
Besides, there are several great authentic Gnostic streams still going strong – though at least one of them is severely persecuted. The Yezidis of northern Iraq, western Iran, Georgian Armenia – that is to say Transcaucasian Kurdestan – have the most unbelievably inspiring tradition. There’s nothing to compare with it in the whole world. It is in a class of its own. The Yezidis have been persecuted cruelly by those in power about them because they are not regarded as “people of a book” as defined – there’s that word again! – in the Koran. They have long been accused of ‘Devil worship’, but that kind of cruelty has been common among oppressors since Jesus was accused of being a devil’s mouthpiece all those years ago. It’s the oldest trick in the book and works because people fear every type of evil – except their own.
Yezidis are today being attacked and killed in and around Mosul and denied police protection in Georgian Armenia. This is fact.
The second tradition I was thinking of was that of the Mandaeans of lower Iraq, who claim John the Baptist as a special prophet and have referred, interestingly, to ‘Christ the Roman’. As far as ‘Gnostics’ go, these people are undoubtedly the ‘real thing’.
When I made the TV series Gnostics in 1985-87, we wrote to the Iraqi Embassy in London, and they denied any knowledge of the Mandaeans. I was worried that they had been wiped out under the last miserable Iraqi regime, but to my delight, I now observe that they have survived – though still having to justify themselves, surrounded as they are by the various Islamic traditions. I think they qualify as Sabians in the Koran and are therefore protected. The wonderful Yezidis, on the other hand, have been persecuted for 1300 years and have no such protection.
An independent Kurdistan would probably offer these unique and admirable people a future that may otherwise be in jeopardy. This would be a very good thing to come out of the current mess in Iraq. The great powers have been screwing up the Middle East since the fall of the Roman Empire, so one may legitimately question whether the mad, bad game of sharing out the property of the vulnerable will end in our lifetimes. We must hope, have faith and love. Spare some love for the Yezidis – even though most people have probably never heard of them.
This, to answer your question, would be a good way to care for the Gnostic tradition – the tradition, I should say, of the authentic spirit of man, enslaved in, and by, the world. The love of money is the root of all evil. The way to revive Gnosis, is to be revived by Gnosis.
Why are people so interested in Gnosticism these days?
I think people are interested in Gnosticism these days because there is clearly a spiritual vacuum at the heart of our culture. Science and mass production have done much for the outside of the cup, but the inside is empty and cannot be sated by drugs, sex and rock ‘n’ roll. The promised liberation is a brief delight followed by a swift fall. Grace looks away and the victim, must, if he or she be lucky, look within.
Even in countries which have not been so saturated by big business as we have – where washing machines, central heating and personal stereos and computers might be very welcome – there is a now well-articulated complaint that with all the money and the “promise of freedom and liberty for all” comes a great threat.
The threat is to the life of the heart and the delicate, invisible life – the thousand links with God – which have kept people alive for centuries in the face of countless dangers and privations. I don’t wish to romanticise here, but one must ask, ‘Who needs the most help?’ The East or the West? Clearly both suffer from poverty – material poverty and spiritual poverty – and, of course there is plenty of material poverty in the West and doubtless spiritual poverty in the East. But can’t we help each other? And thereby help ourselves? But how do we do this?
Well, Jesus offers a clue: “First clean the inside of the cup.” Clean it? we may cry – most of us don’t even know it’s there! Where is this ‘inside of the cup’? Where is this kingdom of heaven (a kingdom, note, not a democracy!) that is supposed to be “nigh and within” us? Well, the example and uncompromising commitment to spiritual reality is such a strong and powerful river surging through the Gnostic tradition, that it would be extraordinary if our bone-dry world did not desire to take a dip in its life-giving waters!
Until we sort ourselves out, we can only export our own confusion.
Could you say a little bit about the Western esoteric traditions as a whole? What is their situation today? What do they have to contribute to our civilisation?
You have asked me to say a little bit about the Western esoteric traditions as a whole and what they may contribute to our civilisation. The second part of that question is simple. What they have to contribute is civilisation. What is civilisation? It is clearly not power and might or the ability to force change. Otherwise we must rank Attila the Hun and Chingiz Khan as leaders of civilisation! Civilisation really boils down to the ability of a range of people to live in a city, organise themselves and get on with each other without falling into chaos. That which promotes the life of the busy hive may be described as a civilising influence. Civilisation is not then an arbiter of truth but of what works well. However, wise men and women have tended – against the odds – to the ancient conviction that nothing works quite as well as the truth, and that a rotten branch – rotten with corruption – will not even support itself for very long – never mind the burden of civilisation. Truth is good.
When I think of Western civilisation with all its inequalities of ability and social status, its wide variety of racial and religious types, its sheer density of pulsating human existence, its vulnerability to natural forces, disease, despair, hysteria, false expectation, boredom and so on, I can’t help thinking that organisations like Freemasonry and discreet societies of personal development are important. While corrupting forces always aim to work within the carcass, the healing agents must also work within the fabric of the human hive – not in fearful secrecy but with a modesty and love that is suspicious of fame, vainglory and social attention. The cool breeze works well unseen. This is perennial wisdom. I think the best of the masonic tradition has contributed hugely to understanding of tolerance and barrier-breaking social idealism. Occasionally, we even find a spiritual insight occurring in some of the most stubborn mental material!
Whatever good men and women try to achieve with this floppy idiot called man, the sincere busy bee is always up against our biological and moral heritage. This inheritance is surely dark enough to make strong men and women weep and give ample reason to despair or take refuge in a cynical stoicism of the type that Gore Vidal, for example, exemplifies with such taste and class.
There is much to be said for contemporary Rosicrucian societies for introducing people to the world of imaginative spiritual development. Many find insight in the worlds of Theosophy, Thelema and Anthroposophy, for example. This is all well and good, as far as it goes, but human society can be corrosive – even destructive.
Human beings really aren’t very nice – unless they’re in some kind of love with one another – and even then… well! The divorce rates with all their sad tales of acrimony and greed testify to the fragility of oaths built on enthusiasm and a lottery win. The Psalmist was being simply realistic when he uttered the words: “None is righteous. No, not one.” Involving oneself in groups may stifle the creative and divine spirit. But aloneness can be hard, and loneliness is, as Jimi Hendrix sang, “a drag.” Perhaps we need to revive in some adapted way the concept of the monastery – not, may I stress, that sad alternative, the ‘commune’. The hippies were hip to everything but their own depravity. Peter Coyote and the Diggers would doubtless tell me I just never saw the real hippies. He would be right. Maybe I was one of them – and how often do we see ourselves?
I suppose in the life of a person, one will, as one puts one’s hand into the hand of God – as much as we may know of Him – for guidance, one will find oneself encountering all kinds of groups and people. No one way works for all people or all occasions. That is how it must be. Those who require absolute certainties will be prepared to believe anything. The One is always present, if unseen.
Experience shows that there are many hidden veins to the cosmic life of humanity and I – for one – am glad – and have reason to be glad – that they exist. Gnosis is, as I said earlier, a gift. One has to be in the right place to receive it. No organisation can do that for anyone. The Spirit bloweth where it listeth. Heed the Spirit above all – and keep the powder dry!
Could you talk a little bit about your own background, how you came to be interested in this area, and what meaning it has for you personally?
You ask about my background. I am an Englishman born in Birmingham – the English Midlands – in 1960, who grew up to believe that something was seriously ‘out of kilter’ in my own dear country and in the world at large. This was something I found in myself as I grew older and travelled about the busy world. I had no special financial or educational advantages, but my father – a railwayman by choice in his later years – said “Seek and ye shall find.” I loved the past and had great respect for the ancients. I was always suspicious of words like ‘modern’ and ‘new’. No one knows the future and if, as someone once said, “the future is a poor place to store our dreams,” then I should say that a dream stored is a dream over. King Arthur will sleep so long as we do.
I cannot remember when I first became interested in the authentic tradition of spiritual life. It seems to have always been with me. I suppose studying the Gnostics at Oxford in the late 70s made me realise that I was not alone, but there were always shadows and intimations of gnosis in books, films – especially old films (the new stuff is generally too cocksure, superficial and loud to have anything to say worth hearing) – and in music.
I have often tried to ‘get away’ from Gnosis, rather like Jonah sailing to sea to avoid Nineveh, but I keep coming back to port, whether I like it or not. Often, I don’t like it at all. I’ve spent a fair amount of time in the cold belly of the whale. The world, however, needs this insight, even if for me it now seems an old story. Somehow, it comes alive afresh again with each telling. And I discover so many new aspects to it, each time I willingly return to its study. It makes us wise and makes fools of us. Gnosis means creation because we do what we know. Creation is the fiery dragon whose scolding breath burns away the void and leaves the golden tree. We pick its fruit and create nothing.
I was lucky (by modern standards) to have both parents and that both parents believed in the individual and believed in the mystery and magick of life, and that they were plain speaking, virtuous and down to earth as well as being receptive to higher influence. That was a gift too. Come to think of it – it’s all been a gift. I’ve done little to deserve such a theatre of sorrow and joy! There’s so much more to do and life is really both too long and too short. We’re here and we’d better make the best of it. Long may She reign over us.
Could you tell us about your recent books, The Golden Builders and Gnostic Philosophy? What are they about?
My books The Golden Builders and Gnostic Philosophy took me ten years to write and were continuations of a work begun in 1986 when I wrote my first book, The Gnostics, at the age of 25. You could say that the new books are the considered works of research and experience – an attempt to bring readers of the first book into deeper acquaintance with the extraordinary Gnostic tradition. I was very aware that some terrible books have appeared in the last 20 years which have exploited the whole subject area and confused people with a lot of journalistic twaddle and conspiracy tales. Some have inspired a recent best-selling novel that suggested Leonardo Da Vinci worked with a code that could be understood by an idiot demented by marijuana.
I wanted to put the record straight. The truth is stranger than fiction and a good deal more interesting. The trouble with fiction is that you can’t live on it; you always want more. Perhaps if you wanted to define the Truth, you might – with tongue in cheek – call it NON FICTION. There is NON FICTION in magick, Gnosis, mysticism and spiritual understanding – but then, I suppose, your readers know this already, or they would not be suffering this interview with a distant star.
by Ranald Crayke
TOBIAS CHURTON was born deaf in Birmingham in August 1960, the third son of Patricia, an industrial laboratory assistant, and Victor, a toolmaker who had served in the REME during the Malayan Emergency.
The Churtons are an ancient family who appeared with lands in Cheshire after the Norman Conquest.
Having acquired the faculty of hearing aged three, young Tobias underwent a long programme of speech-therapy. Pronounced interest in films, music, singing, conversation, books and TV soon emerged. By the age of six, enthusiasm for History and the Bible were added to Tobias's escutcheon. Migrating to Australia with his family in 1966, Tobias spent two happy years in the light-hearted, optimistic atmosphere that characterised Melbourne in the mid to late 1960s.
Returning to an England on a downhill slope at Christmas ’68, Tobias sought solace in the spirit of The Prisoner and The Avengers before leaving home for Lichfield’s Cathedral School in Staffordshire in late ’69 after a memorable summer spent not at Woodstock or the Isle of Wight but with his brother Victor cycling the lanes of old Warwickshire.
In 1971, he joined the state system for seven years at Fairfax School, Sutton Coldfield. There he distinguished himself in inventive mischief, English, languages, history, religious studies, drama, pottery and art. He began writing poetry at 14, exhibiting concerns for the woes of his country and spiritual aspirations of a mature, precocious character. He found an original genius at odds with the egalitarian intentions of the so-called ‘comprehensive’ system. Inspired by his mother’s encouragement and father Victor’s discovery of a powerful Churton presence at Oxford in the 18th and 19th centuries, Tobias turned down a rare apprenticeship at the British Museum's Bindery and manuscript restoration department and aimed instead for a place at Brasenose College where Archdeacon Ralph Churton (1754-1831; great-grandfather of Dean Inge) had written the lives of its founders nearly two centuries before.
By now, Tobias was aware of having a spiritual vocation. Brasenose awarded him the Colquitt Exhibition for prospective ordinands to the Church of England.
After a glorious summer mountaineering with his friend Mark Bennett in the Haute Savoie and Switzerland, Tobias went up to Brasenose, Oxford, to study Theology in October 1978, ushering in a period of intense personal development. It was at Brasenose that he became acquainted with the works and reputation of English mountaineer, magus and mystic poet Aleister Crowley (1875-1947), with whom Tobias found something in common.
On the French-Swiss Alpine border, summer 1978
Tobias wrote, directed and performed in numerous comedic reviews and plays, joined a rock band, taught himself piano, read widely, wrote poetry, explored atheism, and directed his magico-moral play IPSISSIMUS at the Balliol Lindsay Rooms in June 1980. His interests coalesced into a commitment to philosophies of transcendence. After experiencing critical spiritual growth-events in Carcassonne in 1979 and Strasbourg in 1981 (with intimations corresponding to Raja Yoga’s trance of Samadhi), he offered his life to spiritual service in the Church of England after completing his final examinations.
In the In the footsteps of TE Lawrence, Carcassonne, September 1979
Awakening, Strasbourg, April 1981
The Advisory Council for the Church’s Ministry did not, however, recognise Tobias’s spiritual vocation as one corresponding to current ideas of priesthood. By the harsh summer of 1982, Tobias found himself enlightened, but stony broke and unemployed in a bedsit in Tooting Bec.
Two factors raised him from the slough of despond. First, he had made an impression on Dr John Ranelagh, commissioning editor for religious programmes at the newly founded Channel 4. Ranelagh was interested in Tobias’s TV series project on the Gnostics. Second, he encountered an objective correlative of his world-saving dreams – in West Germany, where a group of stalwart friends from Hessen and Berlin, recognising that visionaries have a place in the modern world, took Tobias into their lives and hearts. Germany at the time was experiencing an unreported fresh Reformation with ‘Alternative’ and ‘Green’ philosophies shaking up the complacency of the post-Willi Brandt economic miracle.
Returning to England in the spring of 1983, Tobias Churton’s independent career as a writer, researcher, film-maker, poet and composer properly began with a commission from Channel 4 to work on Hugh Newsam’s remarkable film on doctrine in the Church of England, THE ELASTIC CHURCH. Allan Bennett narrated Tobias’s script and Archbishop Trevor Huddleston advised vicars to put TVs up in their chancels so that Anglicans might see it. We may hope they did.
Selective Summary of Tobias Churton’s work 1984-2010
1984
Tobias spent much of 1984 exploring the forests of Germany and the countryside of Oxfordshire with his friend, the pantheistically inspired Heinz Reinhoffer, putting his experiences of the ‘Grainy God’ into poetry. In the Spring Tobias was called in as special in-house advisor to John Ranelagh at Channel 4 during the Jesus: The Evidence documentary series controversy. While at Channel 4 he secured the first ever five minutes of free speech from a member of the German GREENS on British TV, arranging for his friend Gerhard Fitzthum from Hessen to appear on Channel 4's after-news COMMENT programme to coincide with the London Economic Conference.
Tobias worked as researcher for a Channel 4 TV Documentary: APOCALYPSE about the Book of Revelation and its perils for our times, before going on to work as a researcher for the Thames TV series PEACE – interviews on Peace & Reconciliation for Christmas.
1985
Toby moved to a room in Holland Park, a walk away from the BBC TV Centre, where he was responsible for the conception and research for JOHN LENNON – A JOURNEY IN THE LIFE, Ken Howard’s imaginative 100 minute drama about John Lennon’s life from ‘the inside’, starring Bernard Hill as John Lennon.
Featuring the talents of Peter Cook, Roy Orbison, Roger Waters, Andy Fairweather-Low, Edwin Starr, Paul Jones, Carl Wayne, Zoot Money, Derek Taylor, Linda Thompson, Screaming Lord Sutch, and many others, the production was featured as a Radio Times cover. Praised in many quarters, including Yoko Ono, the inventive production divided critics.
In the autumn Tobias moved to Carlisle to work for Border TV as researcher for an interview series on celebrity's spiritual experiences, REVELATIONS, while Collins Books published WHY I AM STILL AN ANGLICAN, a book of essays by eminent Anglicans. Tobias was the Editor and wrote the introduction: his first foray into British publishing.
1985-1987
The fulfilment of a long-held dream came with the production of GNOSTICS: a four-part Channel 4 TV drama-documentary series produced and directed by Steve Segaller for Border TV and C4.
Credited for ‘Research/Dramatisations’, the conception was Tobias’s. The series featured a powerful portrayal of the Gnostic Christ by Nigel Harrison, giving ‘flesh’ to the ‘Gnostic Gospels’ in New York and the Lake District, as well as dramatic scenes filmed in Languedoc, Florence and elsewhere, written by Tobias, featuring Brian Blessed, Marius Goring, Ian Brooker, James Tillett and others. Tobias coached the actors, drawing forth powerful, spirited performances.
New York, Spring 1986, filming GNOSTICS
Part One of GNOSTICS concentrated on the Gnostic Gospels’ discovery and featured interviews with Muhammad Ali al-Samman (who discovered the ‘Nag Hammadi Library’), Professors Hans Jonas, Gilles Quispel, Elaine Pagels and James Robinson; it is authoritative.
With Brian Blessed as Guilhabert de Castres and Ian Brooker as Dominic Guzman
Part Two explored the Cathar ‘heresy’ of 12th and 13th century Languedoc. It featured interviews with R.I.Moore, Michel Roquebert, Anne Brenon of the Centre d’Etudes Cathares, Villegly. Expert on Troubadour music, GÉRARD ZUCHETTO, was interviewed and performed with his Grop Rosamonda. Tobias would record two of his songs with Gérard in a Carcassonne studio in 1986 and 1987, inspired by a shared love for the poetry of troubadour RAIMON DE MIRAVAL.
Part Three concentrated on the Hermetic Philosophy’s revival during the Renaissance and featured James Tillett as Giovanni Pico della Miranola performing his famous Oration on the Dignity of Man (1486) below the statue of Michelangelo’s David. The contemporary relevance of the Florentine gnostic Hermetists was explored in a fascinating section on Dutch millionaire and collector, Joost Ritman, featuring his company De Ster and his famous BIBLIOTHECA PHILOSOPHICA HERMETICA. The encounter with Rosicrucian JOOST RITMAN would have a powerful effect on Tobias’s life for some years.
At work on The Gnostics, Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica, 1986
Part Four dealt with Carl Jung’s debt to Gnosticism and featured interviews with Hans Jonas, Gilles Quispel, Aniela Jaffé and members of Jung’s Eranos group. A section revealed a Gnostic Church operating at Palo Alto, California, featuring an interview with Gnostic Tau Rosamonde Miller of the Mary Magdalene Order.
It is a very great shame that the series is not currently available in DVD form, for it was not only pioneering but in many respects definitive. Nothing since has equalled GNOSTICS in authority or production values. It was a remarkable appearance amid the conspicuous materialism of the 1980s and gives the lie to blanket characterisations of the period often repeated by journalists.
GNOSTICS won the gold award for best religious TV series at the New York TV Festival of 1988.
Tobias’s reward from Channel 4 was supposed to be his first film as director, writer and composer. Tobias had been writing music for a film on the inner life of WILLIAM BLAKE (1757-1827) since 1983. John Ranelagh at Channel 4 authorised £20,000 development money for Tobias’s drama with music LOVE IS ON FIRE! William Blake 1757-1827. Brian Blessed agreed to play Blake and the whole production was to be filmed in London and the West Country. Tobias sought advice from Michael Powell for the production; Powell was enthused by the idea. Sadly, John Ranelagh left Channel 4 and his successor considered the project too bold for innocent audiences unused to the wine of spiritual vision: a failure of nerve with far-reaching consequences, in Tobias’s opinion.
Nevertheless, Tobias was commissioned to write and direct a kind of sequel to THE ELASTIC CHURCH. Tobias came up with a characteristically daring and colourful film, NO MAN HATH SEEN GOD (1987) which had dramatic elements of vision, a love of poetry evinced in readings by Brian Blessed and a magical appearance by Blake expert, poet KATHLEEN RAINE (pictured with Tobias below).
The film was concerned with an attempt by the Church of England to define its beliefs about God in a book produced by its Doctrine Commission. The film analysed in 26 minutes the shortcomings of the Commission’s approach, a treatment of establishment efforts that did not go down well with everyone, especially those with vested interests. Tobias presented the film and also wrote the music. It was broadcast on Channel 4 in summer 1988 and received its warmest notice from The Guardian.
With Tony Anholt as Ralph Churton (1754-1831); Tobias's father Victor looks on
THE GNOSTICS, Tobias’s book of the TV series was published in late 1987 by Weidenfeld & Nicolson and Channel 4 Books. It was a No 2 non-fiction national bestseller. Tobias had just turned 26 when he wrote it – in four weeks. Published in the USA in 1998 by Barnes & Noble it has sold over 68,000 copies there, the more remarkable since very few in the States have seen the original TV series. The Church Times called Tobias's work a triumph of communication; the Daily Telegraph hailed the series.
1988
Sensing a sea-change in national history, Tobias moved from cash-hub London to semi-rural Lichfield, Staffordshire, to write a novel MIRAVAL – A QUEST commissioned by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, about 12th century troubadour Raimon de Miraval.
1989
Tobias establsihed a small film company, SPIRIT LEVEL PRODUCTIONS. Its first project would be a film commissioned by Joost Ritman’s Amsterdam-based Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica and Utrecht-based TV company Stichting Teleac. Made in the hot summer of 1989 and shot in England and Holland, THE NEW AGE AND THE NEW MAN, written and directed by Tobias, was a 60 minute dramatic documentary which told the story of the Rosicrucians (1614-1620), William Blake (featuring sparkling interviews with KATHLEEN RAINE), Madame Blavatsky, Theosophy, Rudolf Steiner, and the foundation of the neo-Rosicrucian Order, the Lectorium Rosicrucianum, based in Haarlem, Holland.
Christopher McIntosh and Carlos Gilly appeared as experts on Rosicrucianism and JOOST RITMAN, a member of the Lectorium, explained his vision of the importance of GNOSIS to the modern world. Anthony Phillips wrote the score. The film was broadcast as Part Four of the Dutch version of GNOSTICS in January 1990.
In November 1989, as the Berlin Wall fell (predicted by Tobias to Steve Garvey of Reuters 6 months before) Tobias left England for a residency in Amsterdam, courtesy of Mr Ritman, who wanted a special film to accompany an exhibition of Rosicrucian books and manuscripts that was to light up the ‘New Europe’. Living centrally in Gasthuismolensteeg, Tobias enjoyed drinking deeply of the Rosicrucian stream – and the old pubs of Amsterdam. The residency included two remarkable trips to Basle to meet the world’s authority on the Rosicrucians, Dr Carlos Gilly, who also worked for Ritman. The film, provisionally entitled THE VICTORY OF THE LIGHT was never completed, apparently due to complexities in Mr Ritman’s business. The work would, however, bear full fruit later – 18 years later! Gnosis transcends Time.
1990-1993
In the Spring of 1990, Tobias returned to a Britain numbed by lame government and crippled by recession. His first act on returning was to purchase a metallic purple 1600cc custom ‘Trike’ with Kawasaki forks and chrome exhausts, dubbed The Beast.
In March 1990, a provincial by-election brought Labour Leader Neil Kinnock to rapturous reception in Lichfield. Tobias followed the bizarrely mesmerized throng, uttering the classical words ‘All glory is fleeting!’ behind Kinnock’s ear, and conceived of a film that would show the folly of the political-media circus simply by showing it, while setting the madness in context with readings from Hermetic philosophy, the Bible, and Rosicrucian mystics.
THE ELECTION, directed by Tobias and shot by Dave Scott and Belinda Parsons, was the result. The 60 minute film, featuring Screaming Lord Sutch, English ‘Madam’ Cynthia Payne (pictured above), and other notables of government and popular television was described as ‘beguiling’ by TV executive Andrew Barr of TVS; it has never been broadcast. Tobias is not entirely surprised.
In autumn 1990, Tobias decided to embark on A SOLO TOUR of the new Europe from Spain to the Polish border on his Trike a la Easy Rider. He painted John Dee’s alchemical Monas Hieroglyphica on the back of his camouflaged jacket and set off on the Beast for a 3000 mile trek: in some senses, a prophetic act. The story makes hilarious and fascinating hearing and this is not the place for it. Just to note that it was unseasonably cold, rained all the way, and Tobias was miraculously saved by an angel in Hamburg, which is to say, her name was Angelika and she is warmly remembered for proving those with faith in Providence do not believe in vain.
Tobias returned to find an invitation to address the Theological Faculty of the University of Uppsala. The head of the faculty, JAN ARVID HELLSTRÖM wished to translate THE GNOSTICS into Swedish and invited theologians from Sweden and Norway to see Tobias’s film work and hear him speak. Tobias had found a real friend. Jan Arvid said that he could not understand why Tobias had not been ordained and that if he, Jan Arvid, was made a bishop, he would ordain him. Another lead came from the visit to Sweden. In Stockholm, Tobias met Swedish journalist and broadcaster, GÖREL BYSTRÖM JANARV. They would try to make a TV series about the role of sexual love in holy lives.
I
In 1991, Tobias moved for a season to London to work running an office for a film company making a series of films for the BBC about India. In the summer, he interviewed Hollywood heart-throb PATRICK SWAYZE at the Ritz. The director of the programme died and the film was never shown. That was the kind of luck that permeated the early 1990s. At the end of the year, Tobias got together with an old school friend Sean Davison to try to make a TV documentary about Aleister Crowley. He went for the first – but not the last – time to the Warburg Institute to study Crowley’s unpublished papers. It was a remarkable experience. But the film did not happen.
In the meantime, JAN ARVID had been made Bishop of Växjö Diocese in Sweden. He asked Tobias if he wanted to be ordained as a priest in the Church of Sweden. Tobias started learning Swedish and listening to Abba records, as well as those of Jan Arvid, who was, until his tragic death in a car accident in January 1994, a successful song composer.
In summer 1992, the time came to go to Birmingham Airport for a flight to Göteborg whence he would be collected and taken to Öland, then Uppsala, to begin his studies (in Swedish) for ordination, with an aim to be Jan Arvid’s Examining Chaplain.
Tobias did not catch the plane. Returning to Lichfield, he felt immediately drawn to the local archive. He began researching the life and work of 17th century Hermetist, astrologer and ‘mighty good man’ ELIAS ASHMOLE, born in Lichfield in 1617.
This work grew into something called the ELIAS ASHMOLE SOCIETY, whose aim was to turn Erasmus Darwin’s old house in Lichfield into an international Museum of Freemasonry (Darwin was a Freemason, initiated in Edinburgh). The plan did not succeed in its first phase, but the effort would bear fruit in different ways for the next 14 years.
Returning from a job interview with the South Bank Show in 1993, Tobias, walking up the Strand, felt curiously close to familiar spiritual territory. Stopping, he looked into a gap in the railings. He was in Blake’s last home, Fountain Court. He saw it as it was when Blake lived there until his death in 1827. Tobias had an idea. He walked up through Covent Garden to the ATLANTIS BOOKSHOP and spoke to its manager, Caroline Wise. Would she be interested in publishing a follow-up to THE GNOSTICS. Yes, she would. The book was to be called HIT BY THE STONE and would ‘go places’ the first book only touched on. By Christmas 1993, the first version was complete. Tobias demonstrated he was a master in his field, as Tobias’s then agent Mike Shaw of Curtis Brown observed, but its form was uncommercial. The labour would not bear fruit for another nine years.
1994-1995
Visiting a friend in Gloucestershire one sunny morning, Tobias telephoned the number of the late film director Michael Powell, having seen his son Columba interviewed by the BBC the previous night. Columba answered the phone and they met in a pub near Stroud. The meeting resulted in a long and creative friendship.
With the backing of Michael Powell's widow, Thelma Schoonmaker-Powell, and the European Script Fund, Columba and Tobias embarked on a fascinating film comedy called THE GATECRASHERS, a quest for spiritual surrealist René Daumal’s Mountain that Cannot Not Exist in the context of a millennial Languedoc, flush with rumours of weird goings-on, the Priory of Sion, the Lost Film of the Resurrection, Simon Magus, time travel, eternal love, Templar castles and many cultish elements that would go into Dan Brown’s considerably less ironic novels some years later. Tobias and Columba enjoyed researching the script in fascinating locations in the heart of southern Languedoc.
THE GATECRASHERS was well ahead of its time, or after it, depending on what you think of the film industry. Columba reckoned Michael Powell would have adored it, and that is enough for Tobias.
Refining his knowledge of the sources of western spirituality, it was during this period that Tobias opened a fruitful association with the living world of British Freemasonry.
Meanwhile, the Lichfield Press published a Selection of Tobias’s poems, THE FEAR OF VISION. It is an impressive collection. Convinced the contemporary world is deaf to real poetry, Tobias has seldom sought recognition of his poetic genius. Shame.
1996
Tobias planned a new film, INITIATION, based on his researches and adventures in Staffordshire, and his friendship with folklorist, DOUG PICKFORD.
Columba would play ELIAS ASHMOLE and the film would explore Ashmole’s commitment to Hermetism, Royalism and Freemasonry, as well as his founding of the first purpose built public museum in the world, the Ashmolean in Oxford. Tobias was delighted to find ELIAS, born in Lichfield, had been a member of Brasenose College. The alchemists’ circle is a closed circle.
Tobias was introduced to businessman PETER MAXWELL JONES who generously put up the budget for INITIATION.
1997-2000
In 1997 Tobias was appointed founder editor of a new magazine being launched with the blessing of the United Grand Lodge of England, FREEMASONRY TODAY.
Tobias ran the magazine with great success. By August 2000 it could boast over 30,000 subscribers. FREEMASONRY TODAYnow goes out free to every Mason in England (well over a quarter of a million readers). Tobias was keen to revive spirituality and esoteric philosophy of a high order within the Craft, as well as showing that this so-called ‘secret society’ was open-minded, open to enquirers and in many ways a good thing. His work has proven highly influential. Tobias learned a great deal; and so, if I may say, did Freemasonry.
1998
Tobias joined forces with famous ‘art-faker’ and now celebrated artist and art-teacher (via the Sky TV medium) JOHN MYATT, at the time awaiting trial for his creative part in the art forgery scandal of the century. Tobias interested the artist and musician with his plan to write a musical based on the life of avant garde superstar NANCY CUNARD (1896-1965) who had fascinated Tobias since he read of her remarkable life during his Crowley researches.
Tobias with friends of Nancy Cunard at her cottage, Lamothe Fenelon
The musical YOU, ME AND YESTERDAY concerned Nancy’s scandalous relationship with black jazz pianist HENRY CROWDER in the late 1920s and 1930s and came together in a splendid recording made at a Lichfield studio featuring John, Tobias and singer TRACY JEWELL.
At Nancy Cunard's table, Le Divan Cafe, Gourdon
The musical is a pure collaboration of the two talents, John and Tobias. YOU, ME AND YESTERDAY was performed by pupils of Lichfield Cathedral School at sell-out performances at the Lichfield Garrick Theatre in March 2011. The directors were Sue Hannam and Beverley Dunne. Tobias made a film of the show.
2000-2010
Since leaving FREEMASONRY TODAY in 2000, Tobias has devoted himself to writing a series of books covering practically the entire range of ‘Western Esotericism’. They have made him a global authority in the field, a position recognised in 2005 when he was made an HONORARY FELLOW OF EXETER UNIVERSITY and Faculty Lecturer in Freemasonry and Rosicrucianism at the behest of Professor Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, founder of the Exeter Centre for the Study of Western Esotericism, Exeter University.
He has also lectured frequently at the annual conferences of the Canonbury Masonic Research Centre, supported by the vision of the Marquess of Northampton, until lately ProGrand Master, United Grand Lodge of England. Tobias’s lectures have been published in the Conference’s Transactions. He has also been invited twice to address George Washington’s Alexandria Lodge No 22, Washington DC, for their renowned annual St John the Baptist festival at Gadsby’s Tavern, old Alexandria.
Tobias has also worked on a number of films and film scripts. In JACK BROWN AND THE CURSE OF THE CROWN in 2001, directed by Andrew Gillman at Twickenham Studios, Tobias was uniquely credited with providing ‘Egyptian Hieroglyphic Dialogue’. He coached the actors in ancient Egyptian, something he picked up for the film!
The decade’s most notable publications from Tobias’s pen are as follows:
THE GOLDEN BUILDERS – Alchemists, Rosicrucians and the first Free Masons, published by Weiser in 2004 - one of Tobias’s personal favourites.
GNOSTIC PHILOSOPHY – From Ancient Persia to Modern Times, published by Inner Traditions of Vermont in 2005, has sold over 10,000 copies in the States and is widely and deeply appreciated by its readers.
THE MAGUS OF FREEMASONRY, THE MYSTERIOUS LIFE OF ELIAS ASHMOLE (Inner Traditions, 2006) finally brought together a decade of Tobias’s researches into Ashmole’s life. With a strong inner core of care and meaning, this copiously illustrated biography has touched the hearts and minds of many.
In 2006, Tobias was commissioned by Milan’s Cairo Press to write a book on the recently published Gospel of Judas. Tobias’s KISS OF DEATH – THE TRUE HISTORY OF THE GOSPEL OF JUDAS was published for the first time in English by Watkins in 2008. It reveals Churton’s knowledge, wit and close familiarity with the mindset of early Gnostics, as well as his sure grasp of pop culture.
Churton’s magisterial FREEMASONRY – THE REALITY appeared in 2007, published by Lewis Masonic. It was intended to be the most complete, academically sound and enjoyably readable book on its subject. It goes from strength to strength. Nobody has written as well as Tobias on a subject of which many consider him a master.
At the end of 2007 he was commissioned by MARK BOOTH at RANDOM HOUSE publishers to write a biography of ALEISTER CROWLEY. At last, Tobias had the opportunity to assemble a lifetime of research and bring it into parley with a fresh research programme on the subject, bringing together the most authoritative and accurate sources for the first time. ALEISTER CROWLEY - THE BIOGRAPHY was published by Watkins Publishing in September 2011.
Not content with all that, Tobias has also written a masterwork on the history of the Rosicrucian movement, THE INVISIBLE HISTORY OF THE ROSICRUCIANS – THE WORLD’S MOST MYSTERIOUS SECRET SOCIETY (US version: Inner Traditions, 2009), published in the UK by Lewis Masonic as INVISIBLES – THE TRUE HISTORY OF THE ROSICRUCIANS, considered by authorities as the authoritative work on the subject.
October 2010 sees the appearance of Tobias’s considered exploration into THE MISSING FAMILY OF JESUS – An Inconvenient Truth: How the Church erased Jesus’s brothers and sisters from History. Tobias has gone into every extant account of Jesus’s family and with an uncanny insight into gospel sources has come up with the holy grail of New Testament scholarship: a truly plausible and startling account of the ‘historical Jesus’. The book will take time to sink in, but when it does, it will only be ignored at a price.
Tobias's 'sequel' to The Missing Family of Jesus will be published by Inner Traditions (US) in October 2012: THE MYSTERIES OF JOHN THE BAPTIST should help to revolutionize our historical knowledge of Christian origins.
Churton is now entering a life of spiritual and material discovery.
The world at night
Seeking the light
A creed to believe, a drug to relieve
the sorrow, the pain, then on again
round the heavens and starry flight
a lamp to hold in the endless night;
Are we the ones to take the key:
The first-born infants of the free?
BOOKS AND FREEDOM
A Talk given to the young people of Lichfield Cathedral School in 2008
I gaze out on to a sea of faces and what do I see?
I see a great library in the making.
Yes, I can envision each one of you as a book. Can you imagine yourself as a book for a second or two? Imagine your arms as the endboards holding within them the pages of your life – your hearts, brains and bodies make the paper, and something is going to be written on those pages.
Your life.
A small part of that story is written already, but I see a lot of blank paper – waiting to be filled.
Some of you may become small books, some big books. There will be neat and tidy books, rough and ready books, useful books, beautiful books, wonderfully original books, and, sadly, copy-books.
Maybe there’s a truly great book or two out there.
But there’s no reason why you should not all make for excellent reading; it’s up to you.
I can only say this: DON’T GET LEFT ON THE SHELF.
Don’t allow yourself to become so boring – such a dull read – that no one wants to pick you up. Dear Books in the Making, please take notice. Like any book, it helps if you’ve got something interesting to say: something to communicate. The book does not have to be long; but it must be good. Your life will be written on its pages – and some clever people will be able to read through the lines and see behind the lies we tell ourselves and others. Pretty or handsome paper does not mean the reader will hold you in his or her hands for very long. You have got to have substance, meaning, sense, mystery, humour, and knowledge. There will be some pages in your own book you may want to tear out, but they are part of your book, part of what you are. We live to be read.
Yes, we are all, in a sense, books, waiting to be written and read. What is it that does the writing?
Some time over Christmas you will have heard, or will hear yet, these words:
IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE WORD
What word? Was it Aard Vark, the first word in some school dictionaries? In the beginning was the Aard Vark. Doesn’t sound right. Some people think the ‘word’ that was in the beginning means the Bible, because the Bible is sometimes referred to as the ‘Word of God’. Well, ‘the Bible’ comes from a Greek word meaning ‘books’ – so it would say: In the beginning were the books. Surely not! The paper must have come first! Something had to do the writing, and that could be done only when there was something to write on.
Has something got lost in translation? I’m afraid it has. When the Book of St John’s gospel was translated into English to turn a foreign book into an English book, they had a problem. The original Greek said en arche ho logos en. Which probably doesn’t mean much to you. It means: In the beginning was the LOGOS. The Roman Latin writers translated this word LOGOS as verbum, indicating the speech of God: speech as an expression of God’s mind. That is, God said: Let there be Light and there was Light.
So it might have been translated : In the beginning was the LET. God’s word was to allow, or initiate, or to start a creation – the letting go of Light. He let the light go – and it is still running! Energy equals mass times the speed of Light squared! You physicists will understand.
But this is not really the whole point. The Greek word LOGOS means – well, several things – that’s why it was hard to find the right ‘word’ in English!
LOGOS means Mind, or intelligence, and was translated into Hebrew by some Jewish writers as Wisdom. In the beginning was Mind. In the beginning was intelligence. In the beginning was wisdom. Now that sounds right, doesn’t it? You have to have a mind before you can do anything. The divine – that is incomprehensible and mysterious - MIND AT THE BEGINNING made the universe. Which means that the universe is an expression of God’s mind – and that means that God’s intelligence is in the world. Not everyone can see it, I grant you. What would we need to see the divine intelligence in the world? Well, we would need to activate the divine intelligence in ourselves, since we are part of the creation and like knows like. We can understand some of the intelligence in the universe because we have some of that intelligence in ourselves. Maybe we have it all – but don’t know yet how to find it – or use it properly.
Now, some clever person whose divine intelligence was really switched on, many centuries ago, looked at the universe and called it the liber mundi. Some of you may be able to translate this Latin phrase, liber mundi. It means – can anyone beat me to it? – it means the Book of the World. They looked at the earth and nature and the cosmos – which means all of it, including the distant stars, and they called it the Book of the World or Universe. They said the earth and the universe in which we spin was a book.
A Book can be read, and this book was intended to be read. You can read the universe. Why? Because, it was said, this book is written with the ‘finger of God’. God’s finger is like a pen, which means that the code or language of the universe was written with divine intelligence.
In the beginning was the Word, the Logos, the Mind, the Intelligence. We have minds, we have intelligence – and if we use them, we shall acquire wisdom, Knowledge and the knowledge – or wisdom – of how to use knowledge.
So that’s why this wise man called it a Book of the World. Because the Book contains Knowledge. Real knowledge. Amazing things. Amazing thoughts. And if we get to know this knowledge, we shall develop divine intelligence – and come to know the mind that created it – we shall come to know God! And – here’s a clue – this knowledge can also be read as music. The universe is a musical score, waiting to be played. Beethoven thought so. He could hear it even when he was deaf. He came to know God from reading the Universe.
Wow! That’s saying a lot. Most books can tell us about fishing, or sports, or stories about dogs, cats and other furry creatures, some tell us about geography or clothes, music, mathematics, history or what to do on our holidays. But this old wise man said that if you learn to read the liber mundi, the book of the world or universe, you may come to share the Mind of God – or at least a portion of it. This is mighty stuff, powerful and to some people’s thinking dangerous.
Why? Because when, as it is written, the divine intelligence said Let – Let there be Light – and there was Light. I can see it all around me. He was expressing absolute FREEDOM. God was free. Fantastically free! No chains in sight. No bindings. No one to tell Him what to do. No rules but His own. The one who is free is able to permit things to be. I shall say that again because people have some very silly ideas about what ‘freedom’ really means. The one who is free is able to permit things to be. To allow them. To be open to the possibility of new things. Intelligence makes us free. Jesus says, The Truth will make you free. By using it. When we have learnt how to do something, we are free to use it. We understand. We have power over it; we experience feelings of love and happiness, satisfaction and fulfilment. When we learn about ourselves, we will be free to use ourselves, powerfully and properly, according to the law of our nature – our living place in the universe. Our part of the Great Book.
Well, let me tell you, at about the time the wise man talked about the Book of the Universe, the books in the cathedral library across the road, were chained up. Chained to the shelves. As if they weren’t heavy enough in those days, they added chains. They were chained like prisoners on an old galley ship. What wrong had the books done to deserve such punishment? If you listened hard, you could hear them crying. Those books were not free. Why? Because the people who looked after them were not free either. They did not let the books speak to everyone. Why? Because they did not want them to have the Knowledge. If the people had the knowledge, well, they might not need the priests who chained the books up to tell them what was what. And if they did not need the priests, well, they might find they did not need the Church either! There would be a revolution!
Holy smoke! The Church wanted to control the Knowledge. They wanted to control the Book of the Universe. The result was that the Book of the Universe became a closed Book, and men and women were closed in their minds – dark, like the darkest winter night in Narnia under the reign of the wicked queen. Yes, there was need for a revolution! There always is when the Book is closed and the light is shut out.
Before we bring the roof down – and I get carted off by the Spanish Inquisition, or the Bishop of Lichfield – let us go back a bit. Let us say something else about those books that were chained up across the road.
Now, there was one fact that helped the Church keep the very few books that used to exist under their control. Do you know what that fact was?
Books were written by hand and that meant very few people could see them. You had to know someone who could write – and read – and reading and writing was kept to the Church.
And then, something happened.
Printing. Between 1440 and 1450 an inventor called Johann Gutenberg, who lived in a city called Mainz in Germany, experimented with what are called movable types. He found a way to make accurate punch-cutters. Punch cutting is the art of making individual letters, like stamps. The individual letters, called punches or types were arranged in what was called a galley, a wooden frame, but they were not chained down like galley slaves – the printer was able to move them about freely. With the right paper and the right ink, he had freed the word! He could put the letters together any way he liked. A text could be printed time and time again using the same type. The book only had to be written once, and the type arranged once. After that you could have as many books as you could afford. The printing press caused a revolution. The written word could be multiplied almost infinitely. Our capacity to exchange ideas was revolutionised. You did not need to go to a bishop to ask to see a book; you could buy one in the market-place, when you bought your meat, vegetables and leather breeches. Because of books, the world of men’s minds got bigger and bigger – and as his mind encompassed the universe, the world got smaller and smaller. He felt big enough to go and explore that infinite continent called THE UNKNOWN.
It is very fitting then that the first book Gutenberg printed was a beautiful Bible – only 21 copies of it now exist in the world. There is a copy of a copy of it, printed, in the school Library. You might want to have a look at it and think about what its first appearance meant. I know what it meant for one person. A friend of mine, a film producer, was living in East Germany in the days when the government would not let people out (they also controlled what books people could read) – the people were chained to the country by soldiers with guns at the borders – this was going on only 20 years ago. In order to escape the country, my friend had to bribe a border guard with the family’s most precious possession (now worth over a million pounds). She had to give away a Gutenberg Bible – and now it is lost. But she got her freedom and went to West Germany and then England where she could read almost anything she wanted.
After the year 1450 - 560 years ago - the basis of virtually everything you are taught at this school, began to appear. It took only 150 years to lay the foundations of western knowledge. The most important steps were taken within 50 years or so of the invention of printing. It became possible to make a new world and resurrect a vanished one – all through books. Let me show you what I mean.
On 19 November 1472, Gunther Zainer printed the standard encyclopaedia of Isidore of Seville. This had actually been written 850 years before, but had only been available in a manuscript and was kept in monasteries and abbeys. Now it could be read in the home.
In 1473, Avicenna’s Canon was printed in Milan on 12 February 1473 by Philip de lavagua. To the end of the 17th century, this was the most important textbook of medicine – it contained all the ancient and Muslim knowledge of medicine.
The first bilingual dictionary was published in Venice on 12 August 1477. Why Venice? Because there was a big trade there and a German colony of traders who wanted to speak to the Italians – and the Italians wanted to speak to the Germans. They say Money Talks – but not always in the same language!
Also from a German printer in Venice – the very skilled Erhard Ratdolt – printed the first scientific textbook in the world, Euclid’s Elements of geometry. That job was finished on 25 May 1482.
On 13 August 1491, Bernardo de Choris printed the ancient Greek philosopher, Plato’s Works. These works introduced the idea of idealism. Everyone’s heard the phrase that someone is idealistic. Plato said that all things on earth are imperfect copies of an ideal world, the memory of the ideal world – Christians called it heaven - they said was deep in our minds. Beautiful, true and good things and experiences could activate the memory of the ideal. The problem – then and now – is making the ideal happen on earth. So, according to Plato, you could say that the Book of the Universe is a kind of printed copy! He even called the creator of the universe a Workman – a bit like a printer really. According to Plato the Workman imprints his ideas in our hearts.
And did you know that the first book on musical theory in the Christian west was printed in Venice in 1491? It was by a man called Boethius. He thought that music had an ethical basis. Musical harmony could bring people together in peace. Disharmony did the Devil’s work, separating people. That is why the early Blues musicians – who used harmonic dissonance and blue notes – were sometimes called the Devil’s music. But it is also said that the Devil has all the best tunes!
So, within 150 years the basic texts for our civilisation had appeared in print, giving us knowledge of universal education (that means everybody should get an education – not that long ago, many of you would have been working in the fields or up dirty chimneys), the first books about Georgraphy, the first popular Atlas, the first books on modern astronomy, the beginnings of Art History, the first systematic legal textbooks (books about the theory of Law), the first books about how we can know the world through reason, the first books on the theory of history, the first books on chemical medicine, the first books about the telescope.
And did you know that electricity was first described by an Englishman in London in 1600 in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I? The first books on freedom of thought and the faith in a person to reach their own thoughts, not just repeat other people’s. The first books about political freedom, the first books about the freedom of the press, the first travel and guide books.
And I’ll just finish his bit by saying that a couple of years after this palace was built, the first book was printed saying that government was a contract between the ruler and the ruled. That means that government is a moral trust – a trust that can be forfeited – or the contract broken – if the government does not govern properly.
And just in case you thought that all books were about freedom and making the world bigger, it is worth mentioning one book, printed in Rome in 1559 by Antonio Blado. This was the Index Librorum prohibitorum – the Index of prohibited Books. This gives us an idea of what the Catholic Church thought about all this printing going on. They made a list of all the books the Church did not approve of – anyone who read them or possessed them could be cut off from the Church – exiled, they believed, from God. They could be burnt to death at the stake – and the banned books burned as well. The German philosopher Heinrich Heine said that ‘When the books burn, people will burn’. Adolf Hitler began his rule by organising bonfires of all the books he did not like. A few years later, many people from round the world were burnt in the flames of the war he started.
But the Index of forbidden books had a problem. It found itself in competition with other books in an open market of ideas. Once you had printing, you could write your own book saying that the opinion of the Church teachers was wrong, and you could read what you thought you should. This was what we call Free-thinking, something frowned upon by authority since the beginnings of civilisation. Books made it happen all over the place.
In this country we tend to take free thinking for granted. We should not.
You can only have proper free thinking when you can get access to all the best books – the knowledge, and to compare different ideas. In this country we now have only one major bookselling chain – and very few independent bookshops. If the chain store people don’t like the new books, people may never know they exist. If newspapers don’t write about them, we are left in the dark.
Instead of the old Church telling us what they think we should read, now it’s the chain stores! They don’t burn the people they don’t like at the stake, they just ignore them. And think about education. In this school the teachers try very hard to bring you the best books, but in many schools, it is often people appointed by the government who decide what books should and should not be read. My dad used to say, it’s not what you read at school that’s important, it’s the reading you do at home. School books are not enough by themselves.
But I’m still glad I’m a writer. I’ll tell you why. When I was 15, I got an apprenticeship at the British Museum book bindery – the British Museum had the largest library in the country and my job would have been to make sure the books did not fall apart. Then I realised, that though I love books – especially old books – I would have been making book containers – covers, things that bind or close books up. So I had a big argument about it with my dad and declared I wanted to go to Oxford University instead. Then, I thought, I would be able to open lots of books and fill the pages with my own thoughts and studies.
And that’s what I did. And that is what I do.
For me, books and freedom are completely married, entwined together.
So, this story of books is really all about Freedom – expanding freedom, becoming more free. Free of what? Free of the limitations, the bindings of ignorance, of darkness, of not knowing and not seeing. Freedom is often written about, sung about, often shouted about – but often it just means a desire to escape from something hard and difficult.
But freedom means the freedom TO DO SOMETHING. You can only do something when you have learned well how to do it. If you do not know, you are immediately dependent on someone who does – and it hurts the pride and the pocket to ask. Not knowing something can be very expensive. If you do not know, you are less free and then you can be manipulated. To be ‘manipulated’ means that someone can get his or her hands on the compass of your life and put you in a direction that is not the one you would choose if you knew better. Our minds need to grow through learning and doing. Then we may get a glimpse of the Great Book of the Universe of which you and I are all parts – pages written and pages we have yet to write.
So, take the fullest advantage of all your days at school and at home and be a master, not a slave of the universe. A Master is one who knows his Book. As Jesus said : Seek and ye shall find. Knock and the door shall be opened to you. The Truth will make you free.
______________
Please note that TALKS by TOBIAS CHURTON CAN BE FOUND IN THE PUBLISHED Transactions of the CANONBURY MASONIC RESEARCH CENTRE (CMRC).
CANONBURY MASONIC RESEARCH CENTRE
Information about Lecturer Tobias Churton MA (Oxon):
Tobias Churton is an Hon. Fellow of Exeter University, where he lectures in Rosicrucianism & Freemasonry at the School of Humanities & Social Sciences. He is also a film-maker and author, and a member, like Elias Ashmole, of Brasenose College, Oxford. He is best known for his creation of Channel 4’s award winning Gnostic series, along with the accompanying best-selling book, The Gnostics. He was also founder-editor of the influential journal Freemasonry Today. Tobias Churton’s books include The Golden Builders, Alchemists Rosicrucians and the First Free Masons, Gnostic Philosophy from Ancient Persia to Modern Times, Magus, the invisible Life of Elias Ashmole and his latest successful book Freemasonry: the Reality, have made him an internationally acknowledged authority in the field of Freemasonry, esoteric theology and gnostic studies. His talks at CMRC include the following:
Elias Ashmole, the first Initiate
May 1999
Heretical or Revolutionary? Anderson’s Constitutions 1723-1738
2004 Conference
The First Rosicrucians
2005 Conference
The Rosicrucian Manifestos (film)
2005 Conference
A Mighty Good Man
Elias Ashmole & The Initiation
Tobias Churton’s riveting drama-documentary brings the latest researches into the genuine mystery of Masonic origins into exciting and accessible form. Shot on location in the hidden places of the Staffordshire Moorlands, the film features the first ever dramatic reconstruction of 17th-century Masonic workings. Elias Ashmole’s initiation is shown in its entirety, including in the hand-grip, mason’s word, signs and oaths taken from the earliest known ritual records of Free Masonry. Captain Elias Ashmole made the first known personal record of Free Masonic initiation into a lodge anywhere in the world. He founded and gave his name to the first purpose-built public museum in the world — the Ashmolean Museum, in Oxford. Tobias traces Ashmole’s rise from saddler’s son in Lichfield to one of England’s greatest luminaries. This film is both authoritative and imaginative, revealing England at its deepest and most fascinatingly esoteric.
16 November 2005
Freemasonry - A Gnostic Tradition?
The dominant tendency of Craft scholarship in the late 19th and 20th centuries has been to treat with suspicion the idea that Freemasonry’s ritual and self-definition possesses either ancient lineage or notable spiritual import, yet in 1721 Dr William Stukeley FRS, joined a lodge in London in 1721 in the expectation of finding a remnant of the ancient mysteries, an antediluvian knowledge tradition preserved in the ‘Art Mystery’ of Masonry. And while the United Grand Lodge of England emphasises that Freemasonry is not a religion, and that it offers neither salvation nor a particular revealed truth, hostile outsiders argue that Masonry conceals some kind of cult, more fully explored in additional degree systems. It is thus important that the complex question of whether or not Freemasonry is in some sense a ‘gnostic tradition’ is addressed openly and fully, especially as scholars now regard Freemasonry as a vital component of an emerging picture of ‘Gnosis and Western Esotericism’ that has itself become a distinct academic study.
2006 Conference
Broken Masonry : Healing Europe with a dirty joke (Johan Valentin Andreae)
An MA in WESTERN ESOTERICISM
at EXETER UNIVERSITY
School of Humanities & Social Sciences
TOBIAS CHURTON
Faculty Lecturer in Freemasonry & Rosicrucianism
STUDENTS interested in the MA Course on WESTERN ESOTERICISM, offered by EXESESO, the Centre for the Study of Western Esotericism at EXETER UNIVERSITY should be aware that lectures delivered to students by TOBIAS CHURTON are web-posted in the EXESESO system. More information may be obtained from the Course Director PROFESSOR NICHOLAS GOODRICK-CLARKE, through the EXESESO Website: