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The last post was the first of a two-part look at the obelisk as an occult symbol. These were Egyptian monuments that combined the creative energy of the sun and the gods - like the hybrid deity Atum-Ra. This made them symbols of the connection between heaven and earth in a more general sense as well. And the tall pointed shape was perfect for this sort of message - a frozen ray of sunshine beaming from the pyramidal source of creation and pointing to heaven. But then we ran into something we called the life of symbols when tracing this idea forward. This took time to explain, so we wrapped after the obelisk in ancient Rome. This post is part two - how the symbol lived on after the end of the ancient world and came to the modern occult.
The life of symbols - symbols carry a general meaning or set of meanings that can be picked up anywhere or when. This creates the illusion that whoever is connected to the symbol now is part of some ancient order - occultists love lying about their lineages. But personal connections between occult orders don't matter - it's the use of common symbols that creates the connecting thread. Occultists mix and match their lore because it's the "secret knowledge" hidden behind the symbols that they are after.
Johann Ferdinand Hetzendorf von Hohenberg, Obelisk Fountain, 1777, Schönbrunn, Vienna
Each time the symbol is taken up, the general associations are applied to new circumstances, so each is different. And each can add new shades to the general meaning when future users research into it. Endless variations on a theme.
Like this impressive monument to the imperial Hapsburgs in their splendid Viennese palace.
Fake hieroglyphics tell the history of the Hapsburg Dynasty. The obelisk has its usual heaven-earth connection, but now it is topped with a Hapsburg eagle. According to the Palace link, the obelisk had come to be associated with solid, stable princely governance. As the only creature that can approach the sun without harm, the Hapsburg eagle on the sphere symbolized their right to rule - rightful intermediaries between heaven and earth.
Same general associations, but whole new specific.
We started by looking at the general associations coming out of Egypt and how these started to take on their own life in the weird religious environment of imperial Rome. Three big ones stood out by the end of the ancient world:
1. The obelisk as generative energy - either solar and divine creation from the solar cult, sexual and divine from the phallic association with the myth of Osiris, or a combination of them all.
2. The obelisk as link to heaven and earth and life and death. This is the link between divine and solar/sexual creation that explains the placement of obelisks in front of temples. But they were also connected to the death and rebirth of the pharaoh because the the Egyptians believes their kings became gods. Ideas of deification and rebirth through secret ritual are the main reasons for later occult interest.
3. The obelisk as symbol of imperial power and cultural dominance. Rome conquers and supplants what they thought to be the ancient center of civilization and divine knowledge.
The Obelisk of Antinous (Obelisco Pinciano), rediscovered in 1570, Rome
Roman emperor Hadrian's obelisk dedicated to his dead boy-toy Antinous who drowned on a trip to Egypt. He started a cult dedicated to the divinized Antinous - at the top of the close-up, Antinous meets Amun.
Each time a symbol is taken up and reused, it can't help but change to fit the new situation.
Temple of the Obelisks, 1600-1200 BC, ancient Byblos, Lebanon
This Late Bronze Age Phoenician temple is an early adopter of obelisks as a symbol of the gods. You can see that it's more the idea of the obelisk than an accurate copy - some are too short and stocky, others are more like an extended pyramid. The exact rituals and meanings would be different too. It's the general associations in a suggestive shape that carry on.
By the time we get to the Romans, the details that were important to an Old Kingdom Egyptian are unknown and irrelevant. What matters is that the priests can claim that their traditions are "really ancient". Because the obelisks and the general meanings were. The Romans take these and develop them into their own symbolism.`
The Obelisk of Vienne, 4th century, Place de la République, Arles
This appears to have been made for the Circus of Vienne, a Roman town in France in the 4th century out of Middle Eastern granite. It's one of the many obelisks that the Romans produced to meet the demand for the popular monuments.
It's a great example of empire as an ancestor of globalism. Quarries and workshops shipping huge stone copies of Egyptian antiquities all around the Mediterranean. Impressive organization and logistics, but incredible expense for what proved to be fleeting vanity. The obelisk fell sometime after the circus was abandoned in the 6th century and was only rediscovered in 1389.
It is easy to see how the Roman copyists, wherever they were based, didn't really understand the history of obelisk. Comparing this one to an Egyptian original at Heliopolis shows it to be more tapering and pyramidal. Egyptian obelisks taper only slightly so the pyramidion on top makes a sharp change in slope.
The Romans were interested in the general symbolism and didn't care about the specific requirements of a historical Egyptian obelisk. It may be that the more pyramid-like shape was intentional, since the pyramid was even more strongly associated with Egypt than the obelisk.
Seeing it today, it looks like the obelisk was always there - the oldest thing in a historically diverse square. It wasn't. It wasn't even re-erected until three centuries after its rediscovery - the base was built in 1676. The fountain and sculptures are 19th century. The culture of Europe changed radically after the fall of Rome and the Christian Middle Ages had little interest in solar phallic monuments to the cosmic glory of empire.
Pyramid of Arles, probably 2nd century, Arles, France
Then there is this so-called "pyramid" from the spina of the old Circus of Arles. It would be more accurate to call it a pyramidal obelisk from it's location - obelisks were placed in the middle of circuses since Augustus planted one in the Circus Maximus. But this is even more different from the Egyptian originals than the Vienne version - at least that one was carved from a solid marble block.
The Arles obelisk is an even better example of a new environment changing a symbol. The appeal of the obelisk comes from the general associations - earth-heaven links, age, Egyptian mystery - the specifics are forgotten. So the Roman understanding of the obelisk is a general one. So long as it looks kind of like one, the exact shape and construction doesn't matter. Those were Egyptian specifics - the Romans adapt the general meaning to their own context.
There is no way to sum up how much society and culture changed during the collapse of the Western empire. Migrating Germanic tribes changed the demographics of Europe and brought a completely different world view before overthrowing the imperial government.
Alaric entering Athens, illustration, c. 1920s
What had been part of a relatively integrated political and economic zone stretching from Scotland to Iraq became a patchwork of Germanic tribal kingdoms. The Roman legacy survived in some legal structures and social structures, but the main link to the imperial past was Christianity. The Band has been looking into this in the regular posts - it is fair to say that this is when what we think of as Western culture began.
The collapse of the Western empire transforms European culture, putting the obelisk on ice for most of the Middle Ages. Most people have heard the myth of the Dark Ages. This fake Renaissance history claims that medieval Christendom was a collapse into barbarism and that Italian humanists rekindled the lamp of classical learning. The reality is that structures were disrupted and material was lost, but once the chaos of imperial collapse settled down, people started rebuilding. The history of the Middle Ages is one of social, technical, cultural, and economic development.
Medieval heavy plough from the Macclesfield Psalter, around 1320–30, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge University; unidentified manuscript detail of a heavy plough.
Like the heavy plough - one of a number of medieval improvements on ancient agricultural technology that fueled an explosion in European prosperity. Or the development of simple Classical building techniques into the Gothic cathedrals.
The idea of a Dark Age combines two unrelated things into a false conclusion - the upheavals that come with the collapse of a central government and radical demographic change, and a Christian value set that was disinterest in ancient culture for its own sake. Useful knowledge rather than obsessing over pagan social customs or the occult secrets of the late empire. These did live on in the East, where Byzantine and Muslim scholars had better access to and interest in ancient libraries, but in the Christian West the Classical workd was more legacy than guide. Click for a good overview of ancient mysticism including Hermeticism in early Islam.
Walled Obelisk from the Hippodrome (Sultanahmet Square) of Constantinople, Turkey.
This obelisk was obviously not an Egyptian original - not one piece - and was rebuilt by the Byzantine Emperor Constantine VII in the tenth century.
The bronze Serpent Column in the foreground is older. It was part of a Greek ritual tripod brought to the Hippodrome by Constantine I in 324. It commemorates the Greek victory over the Persian Empire at the Battle of Plataea in 479 BC
In the West, the only source of Hermetic knowledge was the Latin Asclepius - likely known to Augustine, but only seriously copied in the 12th century. This is more of a Hermetic revival than a continuation - the use of Arabic materials to supplement the scarce Latin material tells us that there is a interest that wasn't there before. This peaks in the Renaissance with the translation of the Greek Corpus Hermeticum - a Byzantine collection of the surviving ancient texts - by the Neoplatonist Marcilio Ficino in 1463.
Hermes Trismegistus, floor mosaic, 1480's, Cathedral of Siena
The Hermes translation was important enough that Ficino's patron, the famous Lorenzo de Medici, had him postpone his translation of Plato to get to the Hermetica. It was reprinted 22 times over the next 150 years. Hermes was believed to have predated and influenced Plato, making him more important on the path to primordial knowledge.
Hermes was popular enough to appear in a floor mosaic in the Siena Cathedral as a "contemporary of Moses". This implies an authoritative wisdom almost equal to the greatest of Old Testament prophets.
Just because the Middle Ages weren't dark doesn't mean the Renaissance didn't transform Western culture. It's just that the transformation wasn't the Progress! down the path to human perfection that it was sold as. What we got was a vanity and self-idolatry - the literally Satanic faith in perfect knowledge that leads to a non-existence pagan sage fabricated in late antiquity honored in a Christian cathedral. This is too big a topic for a blog post, so we'll stick to what's relevant to obelisks.
Renaissance means rebirth - in this case, a new approach to culture and learning based on reviving bits of the ancient world. The main figures were called humanists because of their interest in abstract human works, rather than the metaphysics of the universities and cathedral schools or the practical knowledge of the trades and crafts. They were Christian, but saw ancient culture as a key to superior way of life in this world. In time, this effects every corner of the West - the Band has argued that the road to Postmodernism began in Renaissance.
Hermes Trismegistus from Michael Maier, Symbola aureae... Frankfurt a. M: Lucas Jennis, 1617.
But the immediate impact was a flood of Greco-Roman texts and artifacts, including the whole jumbled late antique occult mess that we saw in the last post. Hermes became a central figure in Renaissance alchemy and mysticism. Click for an brief overview of Renaissance magic.
The Renaissance occult is as incoherent as the late Imperial version that it drew on. A lot of ancient lore survived the Middle Ages as popular or folk culture, but Renaissance humanists were reading Hermes, Plotinus and the Neoplatonists, Gnostic and heterodox Christian interpretations, Kaballah and other forms of Jewish mysticism directly. This combined with their own medieval Christian intellectual and cultural traditions into their own bizarre mix of philosophy, history, science, magic and art.
Bernardino di Betto (Pinturicchio), Borgia Apartments, 1492-94, Vatican Museum
These splendid rooms were prepared for Pope Alexander VI from the notorious Borgia family. The paintings really capture the blend of Christian, pagan, and personal things that describes this weird school of thought.
The Hall of Sibyls puts pagan seers on the same level with Old Testament prophets as foreshadowing the birth of Jesus. This is Christian humanism - the attempt to combine the Renaissance's beloved ancient wisdom and Christianity.
The ceiling of the Hall of the Saints goes even further, bringing in the newly discovered "Egyptian wisdom" as filtered through occult late antique sources like the Hermetica and creating a fake lineage for the Borgia.
Here's one of the ceiling sections:
The story weaves a retelling of the Osiris myth that associates the Egyptian myth of the Apis bull - - to the bull as the Borgia's heraldic symbol. Humanist intellectuals were spamming "ancient sources" into a big self-serving stew that pretended to tie all of human history together into a Grand Unified Theory of everything. There was no real weighing of evidence - not even much sense of the difference between ancient Egypt and the late Roman fantasy of Egypt. Notice the steep pyramid structures - they don't look like real pyramids, but they don't have to. It's the general idea of "Egypt" applied to Renaissance pope and Borgia family specifics.
If occult symbols in imperial Rome are hard to pin down because they are adaptations of the originals, what do we say about Renaissance versions adapting the adaptations? As the life of symbols rolls on, they get further and further from their origins. This gives them more and more shades of meaning. Every time someone revives an old symbol, they get it from somewhere. The Romans and Phoenicians got the obelisk directly from Egypt. They are adapting the original general meaning. But the Renaissance got their Egyptian symbols from Greek and Roman sources. So their understanding had the Egyptian general meaning and the associations added during the late empire. The mix-and-match occult interpretations also multiply without much concern for historical coherence.
Emerald Tablet (Tabula Smaragdina) from Heinrich Khunrath's Amphitheatrvm sapientiae aeternae, solivs verae, 1609
This was credited to Hermes, but seems to have been Arabic - the 1st appearance was in the Kitab Sirr al-Asar from around 800. This came into the West in 12th and 13th century translations and became a foundation for European alchemists. They believed it contained the secret of the prima materia - the basis of alchemical transmutation and occult link between macrocosm and microcosm.
The obelisk resurfaces towards the end of the Renaissance - the life of the symbol reawakened after a long medieval sleep. Only now its meaning is understood through these webs of interpretation that started before the fall of the Western empire and proliferated in Renaissance phantasy. It is too complex to try and trace out completely, but two main lines of thought can be identified. Both are connected to the extreme age of the symbol.
1. Mystery
Renaissance thought was based on the idea that older was better. Their culture was degraded from Rome, so that must have degraded from something purer. They found support for this in their Christianity - the Old Testament started with a fall from perfection, and it told of extraordinary lifespans and supernatural heroism. It even jibed with their Christian Neoplatonism - according to Plato, the further you get from perfection, the more debased the copy. If Eden was a perfect state, the further we go in time, the more debased we become. They accepted that Christian salvation was an essential difference, but craved more perfect worldly knowledge as well. This is that Grand Unified Theory - Christian revelation + perfect ancient knowledge reveal the Truth about reality.
Otto Vaenius, Mors ultima linea rerum est, from his Q. Horatii Flacci Emblemata, 1612
Emblem books used similar images to occultists, but for moral instruction instead of magic. This is the last in a book of emblems based on Horace intended to teach a French prince. In this one, death follows all worldly honors, with virtue all that matters. The skeleton symbolizes death - the connection to heaven is made by stylized obelisk forms. Vaenius didn't care about historical accuracy - it was the general meaning of death and resurrection that he was interested in.
This quest for perfect human knowledge was as successful as all the other ones. But it brought Hermes and the Egyptian occult into the spotlight. The obelisk became a symbol of extreme antiquity, with supernatural associations that captured the humanist's sense of wonder and mystery.
This is what leads into the modern occult.
2. Power
The Romans brought the obelisks as symbols of conquest and cultural dominance, and this meaning also was appealing. The first re-rerction of an obelisk took place in front of St. Peter's in Rome as a humanist-flavored statement of Roman Catholic supremacy.
Vatican Obelisk, built by Pharaoh Mencares in Heliopolis, 1835 BC.
This famous obelisk was brought to Rome by Emperor Caligula in 37 AD, moved to the center of St. Peter's Square by Pope Sixtus V in 1586. It was the only one that never toppled, but moving it was a considerable accomplishment. It was the first, and figuring it out was what let to all the raising of all the other obelisks.
The decision to move the obelisk to the center of the square was obviously a very symbolic gesture.
Globe from atop the Vatican Obelisk, gilded bronze, first half of the 1st century, Rome, Capitoline Museums
Note how the obelisk is topped by a ball and a cross. It's a replacement for this globe - added when it came to Rome and believed in the Middle Ages to hold the ashes of Julius Caesar’s ashes. Sadly, when it was opened during the 1586 move, it was empty.
The new topper makes the appeal of the Power general meaning obvious.
The mountains and lion come from the pope's family arms. It was common for popes to mark their building projects with this kind of heraldic label - sort of like a big donor putting their name on a hospital wing if he didn't use his own fortune.
But it's the topmost symbol - the cross - that shows the official ideology behind raising the obelisk. The Romans imported these mysterious stones to celebrate their conquest of Egypt and mark the rise to the center of civilization that followed. Renaissance thinkers saw the fall of the obelisks in the Middle Ages as a metaphor for the decline of Classical culture into the "Dark Ages". Figuring out how to stand them up again became a symbol of Rome rising again after the trials of reformation and counter-reformation. The cross tells us that this new "empire" is spiritual and Christian.
Raising the Vatican obelisk scenes from engineer Domenico Fontana's Della Trasportatione dell'Obelisco Vaticano, 1590
Since the ancient methods of raising obelisks were lost, moving this one was enough of a technical accomplishment to be commemorated in a splendid volume. Solving a problem that had existed since antiquity seemed like a symbol itself - the restoration of technical ability as a sign of the restoration of the glory of Rome. Only a Christian Rome under papal rule.
Lateran obelisk, moved from Karnak to the Circus Maximus in the 4th century, raised in front of the Lateran Palace by Sixtus VI in 1587.
Raising the obelisks were part of much more extensive building projects. Sixtus planned on making Rome a capital worthy of a world spiritual power and heir to the legacy of civilization. The rust-colored palace behind the obelisk is another one of these projects. Buildings, roads, fountains - he even got one of the old aqueducts working again, bringing water back to abandoned areas and letting the city grow.
So the Vatican obelisk was presented as a symbol of Catholic reform and Christian Roman revival. The Church as the heir to the entire legacy of the ancient world, but perfected and fulfilled through faith. But as we know, symbols have lives of their own, and the obelisk has wider meanings than just taking over cultural leadership. That's part of it, but what sort if leadership is being conveyed?
Athanasius Kircher, Obeliscus Pamphilius, folding plate preceding p. 1, Rome, 1650
Polymathic German Jesuit charlatan Athanasius Kircher falsely claimed to read hieroglyphics based on his knowledge of Coptic Greek. He wrote fantastical books of "Egyptology" climaxing with his Oedipus Aegyptiacus (Egyptian Oedipus) (1652-54) where he promised to solve the riddle of that Sphinx. This is an imaginary translation of an obelisk that he oversaw the excavation of and a prelude to the Oedipus Aegyptiacus.
Kircher's "translations" of Roman obelisks were part
but the Jesuits were especially interested for more ambitious reasons. They were looking for a universal language - supposedly to spread the Gospel, but it's a troubling look for a purportedly Christian order to try and recreate the Tower of Babel. Regardless of the reasons. Then you remember that there's probably a reason why Jesuits have been linked to globalist schemes for as long as they've been Jesuits. And their Collegio Romano was built over the ruins of a Roman temples to Isis and Serapis.
Athanasius Kircher and Georgio de Sepi, Romani Collegii Societatis Jesu Musaeum Celeberrimum..., Amsterdam: Jansson-Waesberg, 1676
The only description and picture of the museum of wonders that Kircher assembled in the Jesuit Collegio Romano. Mote the prominent obelisks. Kircher was an occultist in the truest sense of the word - he believed that true wisdom hid beneath a layer of secrecy. Pythagoras, he claimed, passed hermetic Egyptian secrets into the West with riddles and symbols.
Here's a long quote that captures Kircher's version of the unity of religions/knowledge. "The Rabbis say that all of Holy Scripture is nothing other than an extended symbol of the most sublime matters and mysteries, appropriate only to learned men long and deeply versed in the Law so that they know it. So, too, Christ our Savior conveyed this same eternal Wisdom in the form of speech [known as] parable, as we often read among the Gospel writers....
...Thus the hidden substance of God does not know how to enter profane and polluted ears by means of naked speech. Julian the Apostate, although impious, rightly said that "Divine Nature loves to be covered and hidden away."
It is true that the Bible tells Christians that they lost true seeing with the Fall - that the world became a valley of shadow seen through a glass darkly. But this isn't what Kircher is talking about. He holds the luciferian Renaissance position that pure truth can be reached through the darkling glass by correctly reading obelisks. To be fair, any other esoterica he could pack into the museum as well. This isn't to say that Kircher was the universal authority on obelisks, just that he perfectly illustrates the path it took into the occult after the Renaissance.
Frontispiece to Athanasius Kircher, Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae, Latin; Rome: Sumptibus H. Scheus, 1646
Kircher’s study of light, optics and related things is typical of his mature Renaissance version of the occult unity of all knowledge. It contains the first description of the camera obscura, astronomy and astrology, gnomics, optics, and catoptics, the design and construction of sundials, the “animal light” of fireflies, and a study of microscope technology preceding Hooke and van Leeuwenhoek by about 20 years.
Kircher was a Jesuit, but the faith being symbolized is more luciferian hermetic than Christian.
It's a deceptive image because it is built on the Gnostic notion that balancing opposites is the path to Truth. Day and Night are the balanced path the transcendent God that is beyond direct human conception. It also gives authority to ancient "authorities" that have no place in a Christian notion of the mind's road to God. It's worth a look, because it reveals deeper intellectual vanity in the Church on the edge of Modernity.
The basic premise is an old one in Christian theology - observation and reason are reliable pathways towards the Truth, but are not sufficient on their own. The Band has posted a lot on the relationship between empiricism, faith, reality, and Truth [if you are interested, the Epistemology link at the top gets deeply into it]. The gist of it: what it materially true to limited human comprehension orients us towards ultimate Truth in an imperfect way.
Circular diagrams relating to the scientific study of optics from Roger Bacon's Perspectiva, late 13th century, British Library
The Church's version was different because it starts with the assumption of Christian metaphysics and works down, but the structure is more or less the same. Direct understanding of God is beyond reason or observation, but can be known mystically, through faith. The medieval Franciscans pushed this idea hard at the end of the Middle Ages. Franciscan friars like Roger Bacon were at the forefront of the late medieval rise of scientific investigation. And St. Bonaventure - a the great general of the Franciscan order - wrote Itinerarium mentis in Deum [The Soul's Journey into God] in 1259. It develops St. Francis' idea that the beauty of the world reflects the beauty of God into a systematic program and became one of the most popular works of its kind.
José Juárez, The Last Communion of Saint Bonaventure, oil on canvas, 17th century, Museo Nacional de Arte, Mexico City
This came up on a St. Bonaventure image search. It's about the same age as the Kircher and also shows heaven as a bright symbol. Bonaventure is going to get there, but pay attention to how. His path goes through the rituals of the Church.
The Soul's Journey into God starts with what we can know directly, but moves through faith to Truth. Any knowledge claim about absolutes is an act of faith - this picture shows what the artist has faith in.
The notion that creation shows God's "fingerprints" through a glass darkly is not a Franciscan invention - it is a conventional Christian position and the foundation of Christian logos. The Franciscans just made it a point of emphasis. By the time we get to Kircher, natural philosophy was well-established in the Church as a whole. What does Kircher have faith in?
The main figures are hard to define specifically because they are not typical personifications. They are probably original creations and have features coming from different sources. They look like Light and Dark made out of various Day/Night and Sun/Moon symbols.
Unusual, but not out of line for book on light and vision.
Look closer at Light. He's a sun god type covered in signs of the Zodiac and holding the caudecus associated with Hermes. It's a universal figure - it stands for the occult unity of all knowledge. It's inspired by God and beams into the world. Just above, we see it "Sacred Authority" - "Light" in its different forms originates in the same place as presumably Christian revelation.
Presumably, because there is nothing explicitly Christian here. The Hebrew lettering - YHWH - is an Old Testament reference and applicable to any Abrahamic faith. Note how the all-seeing eye on the caudecus connects Hermetic astrological "enlightenment" and sacred authority. The unity of all knowledge leads to Truth. Through "Light", not Jesus as logos... Any wonder the Jesuits have drawn suspicion?
William Blake, Satan in his Original Glory: ‘Thou wast Perfect till Iniquity was Found in Thee’, 1805, ink and watercolor on paper, Tate, London
Sunlight as a manifestation of the light of Truth is the same old idea that we saw in the combination of Ra and Atum in the ancient Egyptian symbolism of the obelisk. Occult symbols stack up and get more and more confusing because occultists treat them as different manifestations of the same deeper Truths. For Theosophists, luciferians, and other modern occult offshoots of Hermeticism the "Lightbringer" is Lucifer.
Kircher's Light isn't explicitly "Lucifer" but the Hermetic, astrological, and occult symbols are way more consistent with luciferianism than Christianity.
Dark brings us into that moronic "balance of opposites" path to truth that has been catnip for midwits since before ancient Gnosticism. A "special" kind of math where -10 and 10 add up to infinity. Kircher is shifty - setting up the appearance of balance but placing Dark slightly lower. And whatever light Dark has is a reflection of Light's beam.
There is no Dark "balance" to the light of Christian Logos. They aren't perfectly balanced, but the Light - Dark - Truth triad is occult, not Christian. The symbols back this up - the moon crown on Dark comes from ancient images of Isis.
Dark also had an "authority" up above - in this case "Reason" writing words beamed from the all-seeing eye. The light of Truth is taken in by reason and processed in the dark into new insights. Reason is how Truth is understood in the dark. But one doesn't lead into the other - Reason is a parallel path leading off reflections of Truth.
Connecting Reason to Darkness is another luciferian-Gnostic-occult type set-up.
Down below, the reflected light of Reason lights up "Profane or Sacred Authority" - a lantern in the dark. Without reason, human authority is unenlightened. With reason, authority aligns with the will of God.
The portrait is the Hapsburg Emperor Ferdinand - Kircher's patron. The two-headed eagles are Hapsburg symbols. Ferdinand is flattered as an enlightened ruler.
On the other side, Light illuminates the senses - the things we see are true, but not understood. We have to take this and filter it through Reason to understand the deeper meaning.
One ray penetrates a cave where it reflects back up. Kircher's book looks at optical instruments as well - the idea here is that these tools extend sense knowledge into areas beyond their natural reach.
This is just the main symbols - there is more here that would take too long to try and figure out. But it is enough to see why Kircher and the Renaissance occult is so hard to pin down. They were spamming out centuries of nonsense speculation from every source available and pretending it was a roadmap to Truth. This is how occult symbolism tends to work today. We called this technique the spray of symbols when we looked at the same tired themes in modern occult fraud Jordan Peterson. Spray "deep" references so thickly that it creates the illusion of universal knowledge. And if it makes no sense, who cares! Remember, he tells us that Divine Nature loves to be covered and hidden away. Ancient arcana is a path to truth, but plain speech is abhorant to God because something something parables.
But note how he diminishes the importance of religious revelation - dispenses with Christianity altogether - for an occult notion of knowledge as Reason decoding secrets in the dark.
The Christian perspective is a bit different.
William Holman Hunt, The Light of the World, 1853-1854, Keble College Chapel, Oxford
Christianity is full of light metaphors. But that path to Truth has no need for riddles - the message is pretty clear.
Looking at Kircher's Renaissance ideas makes it is easy to dismiss him as a relic from before modern times. But look at his dates - he was spraying symbols in the middle of the 17th century, not the 15th or 2nd. Right between rotisserie heretic Giordano Bruno and Newton's revolution - a little after Galileo. This is Scientific Revolution country - it appears that the Church was supporting occult research as well as scientific study well into the counter-Reformation.
Engraving of the Goddess Isis in a letter from Ovidio Montalbani to Kircher, 5 September, 1664
He's not well known now, but Kircher was insanely connected in his day. The guy was patronized by "pope, emperor, princes, and prelates". He was important enough within the Jesuits to be released from teaching and devote himself to his studies. Including his own museum of wonders with things from the Jesuits' global missions. His books were published and circulated widely and openly. There was no censorship or controversy like Galileo. He traveled where he wanted and never lacked funds.
He may be a relic, but one that shows us that the "elites" - Church and state - were way more enthusiastic about the occult at a much later time than is usually believed. This letter was from a prominent mathematician - Kircher wasn't the only establishment figure to be captivated by pagan idols.
Kircher is really fascinating. He's actually kind of sidetracked the post. One of his obelisk drawings came up in an image search and looked promising, but looking into the background to see if it was worth using opens a rabbit hole more psychedelic than the Dead. He was incredibly prolific with a vast esoteric knowledge base - this post barely scratches the surface. If you are into unusual old books, most of his stuff has been scanned on-line. The're all in Latin, translate doesn't work, and there isn't much explanation of his complex occult symbolism, so the appeal is limited. But it's a reminder that a lot of the cultural heritage that cringing defeatists whine about "losing" is just sitting right there for anyone that cares enough to attempt the herculean labor of typing some search terms.
Here's a screen shot of the frontispiece from the scanned copy of Kircher's Obeliscvs Pamphilivs Hoc Est, Interpretatio Nova & hucusque intentata Obelisci Hieroglyphici from 1650. The frontispieces are the most interesting part of Kircher's books. This was the first major demonstration of his claim to read hieroglyphics and a prelude to his Egyptian Oedipus - in other words, a major part of of his "Egyptology".
It also belonged to the family of Pope Innocent X, and was raised in front of his family palace on a magnificent fountain by the famous sculptor and architect Gian Lorenzo Bernini. This is the level of prestige that Kircher had. Note how its Mercury, that is Roman Hermes, who points to the study as rescuing ancient Egyptian lore from the scythe of Time.
Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi (Fountain of the Four Rivers), 1651, Piazza Navona, Rome
Here's the fountain. It is pretty spectacular, with the obelisk raised up on a rocky "hill" covered in figures and symbols.
It's named for statues of four river gods representing the four known continents - Nile for Africa, Danube for Europe, Ganges for Asia, and Río de la Plata for "the Americas". The four corners of the world. This represents the global ambitions of the Church, whose missions at this point were having success all over.
There's that obelisk/universal globalism thing again.
Here's Ganges. It's a pretty conventional version of an ancient Greco-Roman statue of a river god. You can also see how the rock is made to look rough and natural, and the other symbolic details. It looks like it could be something from one of the Kircher frontispieces. Not surprising, considering Kircher collaborated with Bernini on the design. Considering that he wasn't known as an artistic talent, his contributions would have been the concepts and symbolism.
Remember that the pope and the Jesuits were keen to support Kircher's hieroglyphic research because they were hoping to find a universal language. That is, another Tower of Babel. Or more globalism.
And about that symbolism...
Gaspar van Wittel, Piazza Navona, Rome, 1699, oil on canvas, Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza
The fountain (and Innocent X's palace) were at the center of the Piazza Navona - the biggest plaza in Rome. It was formerly the 1st century AD circus of the Emperor Domitian and managed to keep the familiar oval horse track into the present day. Here's a computer image and modern aerial.
Remember that Peter was crucified in the Circus of Nero, and Domitian was strongly associated with persecution of Christians. Reviving his imperial circus is an odd choice.
Look at the top of the obelisk. The Vatican one at least had a cross to imply that this new globalism was "Christian". This one only has the Pamphili dove - Pope Innocent X's family symbol.
A pagan Egyptian symbol of divine authority in the world, pagan Roman symbols of the continents, and a personal symbol crowning it all. Obviously, the heraldry is from a papal family, but that's the point - there is nothing explicitly Christian here. It has to be inferred by the viewer. Kircher did believe divine truth is "hidden" but what he shows is a personal statement of occult dominance. If there is any "message", it's the luciferian path to personal transcendence.
So the obelisk with it's universal language and it's one-world fountain were set up on the spina of an Imperial circus. And topped with an symbol of personal rule. Totally different specific, but the same general imperial globalist symbolism. The life of symbols.
Pope Gregory XVI opens the port of Ripa Grande, Rome, 19th century, Palazzo Braschi, Rome
At this point the official history tells us everything changed. Enlightenment rationalism sprang Athena-like from the collective mind of the Scientific Revolution and banished the old Renaissance mix of occultism, philosophy, and science to the dustbin of history. The Church "resists" modernity for a while - Gregory XVI banning trains and gaslight [and another take that looks at Gregory's corruption] in the 1840s is a typical gesture - before eventually joining the parade.
Gregory opening the Roman port with steamships suggests the reality may be different.
The standard timeline says that the Renaissance is a transition from Medieval - that is Christian - "superstition" to modern "reason". An important push, but left behind when no longer useful. Like a booster rocket taking a moon probe from earth's atmosphere to loss of contact. Progress! By this account, Kircher is simply a historical curiosity - a way to understand the confusing Renaissance occult Grand Unified Theory of knowledge.
Isaac Casaubon, De rebus sacris et ecclesiasticis exercitationes... (On Sixteen Sacred Matters and Ecclesiastical Practices...), London, John Bill, 1614.
Hermes supposedly went poof when Isaac Casaubon [nod to Umberto Eco] used Renaissance philological and critical techniques to prove the Corpus Hermeticum was written around 300 AD, and not in the days of Moses. This was at the behest of King James I of England as a Protestant response Catholic historian and polemicist Cesare Baronio giving it a political dimension. But it ended the claim that what had been passed off as Hermes was Egyptian.
Jacob Jordaens, Allegory of the Peace of Westphalia, 1654, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Norway
The end of the Wars of Religion are another symbolic event. The crowns of Europe overcame opposition from the same Pope Innocent X and recognized the right of nations to choose their religion in the Treaty of Westphalia. This is fairly seen as secular monarchies taking complete control of European society from the Church and therefore another important transition on the road to Modernism. From this point of view, the globalist claims of his obelisk look like a futile boast in the face of growing irrelevance.
The "Age of Absolutism" follows before the Enlightenment replaces all "superstition" - religion, monarchies, and the occult garble of Kircher alike. That's the textbook story anyhow. But readers and anyone who thinks about it for a moment know that Enlightenment "reason" is full of fake faith in things that are empirically untrue. The reality is that when European monarchies took over art and culture leadership from the Church they secularized the content but kept the basic forms. Obelisks weren't prominent at first, since European royalty preferred the Classical symbolism of ancient Rome.
But they do manage to sneak back in in the 18th century. The Obelisk Fountain at the Hapsburg's Schönbrunn Palace that started this post looks a lot like the Fountain of the Four Rivers. Only instead of a Pamphili symbol on top, there is a Hapsburg one. But they don't come back as big imperial symbols like they did in ancient or papal Rome.
They can be war memorials:
Kagul Obelisk, 1772, Catherine Palace, Tsarskoye Selo, Russia; The Obelisk at Slottsbacken, 1800, Stockholm.; Patriots' Grave, 1818, Old Burying Ground, Arlington, Massachusetts, Monument commemorating the battle of Toulouse of 1814, 1835, Jolimont, France
Gravestones:
Lilleshall Monument was built in 1833 to commemorate the 1st Duke of Sutherland.
Random royal landmarks
The Jubilee Obelisk in Royal Victoria Park, Bath, commemorating Princess Victoria reaching the age of majority in 1837
And any number of other memorials, commemoratives and eye-catching follies.
Conolly's Folly, 1740-41, County Kildare, Ireland
Follies are buildings without any purpose other than to be appealing in some way that were popular in 18th and 19th century English gardens. Aristocrats landscaped their estates like paintings and liked to spice up the scenery with fantastic structures. This is where we see some earliest obelisks in Britain.
This one is really early, but is a perfect example of a complex folly. There is no function other than to be an attraction, and there is no single style of architecture. It's completely imaginative. According to the link, Katherine Conolly built it to provide employment during the Famine - a make-work project to transfer cash into the local community. It was successful enough that she kept building follies, so it isn't totally accurate to say there was no purpose. Just no purpose to the building itself.
Brightling Needle, 1815, East Sussex
Mad Jack’ Fuller
One of Fuller's well-known follies and more of a classic obelisk. Some say it is a monument to Trafalgar, others to Waterloo, and no one really knows. It's a folly.
There doesn't seem to be much to say about this. Sometimes the obelisks will have a memorial dedication - to an event or a person - but sometimes they're just something to look at. And structures in private estate gardens aren't really strong signs of world domination. They may have a more sinister meaning, but it isn't easy to find or obvious from the use.
There is nothing all that systematic in this on the surface - the general associations are death/rebirth and power, but the specifics all go in different directions. The occult meanings hang around in the most vague and generic possible - as an old symbol with a serious air that fit the contemporary Egyptian craze. But the dreams of a secret root of all knowledge are long forgotten. Obelisks were just things to keep around. For some reason.
Obelisk Honoring Emperor Domitian and the Goddess Isis, 88-89 AD, found in Benevento, Italy; granite, Museo del Sannio, Benevento
The Renaissance observer has less historical data, but sees the obelisk in a much broader frame of reference. The age and exotic origins tie into fundamental truths about the nature of man, God, and reality. Modern knowledge is divided - when the universal knowledge dream imploded, religion, philosophy, history, government, science, etc. all went their separate ways. The obelisk belongs to the historical and some physical science disciplines. There is no "serious" venue where it would lead into political or philosophical speculation.
Luxor Obelisk, 13th century BC, installed in the Place de la Concorde, Paris in 1833 by King Louis-Philippe I
Modern history winnowed out most of the exotica and occultism that fascinated the likes of Kircher, so that whole dimension disappears outside of narrow historical studies. Elevating a pharonic obelisk in the center of Paris means nothing more than an ambitious cultural response to a contemporary Egypt craze.
The Luxor Obelisk got a new base when it was erected in Paris. But instead to trying to add some esoteric commentary, it shows how the obelisk was moved and stood up. It's a commemoration, but what it commemorates is engineering and logistics management. Purely secular, modern, technical achievement.
Moving obelisks was considered a high-level challenge in the ancient world. The Egyptians cut them with bronze tools and raised them with uncertain methods. The Romans saw bringing them to Rome as technical as well as symbolic sign of supremacy. And figuring out how to stand them back up was enough of an accomplishment that the Renaissance popes claimed it was a sign of Rome reborn. But the engineering was just one part of a host of connected meanings.
And unlike the papal obelisks, there is no symbol on top. No cross, cremation urn, family arms, nothing. Just a golden pyramid - a historic shape with a simplicity that appealed to Enlightenment rationalism.
All together, it looks like the occultist superstition has been exorcised. The magic needles of past cultural centers have been modernized into monuments of historical knowledge and technical prowess. This way it can still pick up the old power symbolism and declare Paris the center of civilization while claiming to reject all the old myths that stand in the way of Progress! The life of symbols, like everything else has been disenchanted and hollowed out to fit globalist ideology.
But we know that the Enlightenment maintained articles of faith - often in self-evidently ludicrous things - by declaring them "reasonable". Old ideas hung around under secular facades because saying things doesn't change reality. Put aside the context and look at what happened - raising a prominent Egyptian obelisk in a major center is a symbolic gesture that has been recognized for millennia because of its occult/religious associations. The technical achievements were secondary - a way to impose these symbolic monoliths on the urban landscape. No one is raising obelisks because they look pretty, or making them major landmarks because Egyptian-themed art is popular. The simple idea of obelisk as monument is based on this symbolic history - otherwise, why choose this alien and not particularly attractive form?
Our Renaissance viewer didn't have the technical or historical knowledge of his modern counterpart, but saw the obelisk a much bigger web of associations. The modern viewer sees more deeply but has narrowed the subject area to the areas acceptable to materialist globalist ideologues.
So where did all the occult meanings go?
Chymische Hochzeit Christiani Rosencreutz anno 1459 (Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz in the year 1459), Strasbourg, 1616
Turns out they followed their own separate path, like all the other slivers of the Renaissance occult Grand Unified Theory. Timelines may call it the The Age of Reason, but the actual history shows one occult movement after another, all recombinating the same mess of ancient symbols and Renaissance adaptations. Hermeticism and alchemy are consistent themes, as are Gnostic and/or luciferian pathways to personal enlightenment. Ancient and Renaissance figures are evoked as needed. And the symbolic life of the obelisk rolls on.
Two years after Casaubon debunked Hermes, the anonymous Rosicrucian manifesto, Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz appears launching the new wave of Hermetic occult.
Egyptian lore doesn't vanish, it changes costume and venue. The life of symbols metastases into new combinations of hidden wisdom and occultic dreams of the unity all knowledge.
St. Peter's Square, with inscription and marks of the sundial at noon
In 1817, St. Peter’s Square was inlaid with a compass rose and a sundial. The position of the midday sun marks the signs of the zodiac and dates of the solstices, but not the Gregorian calendar. The argument for raising the obelisk in 1586 was that it is a symbol of Rome restored as a Christian empire in the Renaissance historical symbolism of the time. Makes sense on the surface from a modern secular historical perspective - we've Progressed! beyond that sort of magical thinking. So why pagan astrological symbolism in the 19th century?
It's inconsistent with both the traditional Catholicism and Enlightenment "scientific" history. But it was important enough to do, though none of the popular sites explain why. This is one of those odd gaps - like a serpent throne or red shoes - the points to something else going on that the official history isn't picking up...
This is a good place to stop. The post got sidetracked with Kircher, but it was worth going into the complexity and incoherence of this symbolism. The timeline might change, but it is the same occult nonsense that is still getting reused and repackaged. The next post will wrap the occult obelisk by following it into modern times.
For now?
Mystery and power are connected.
Click for the third and final part
Harvey Wiley Corbett, George Washington Masonic National Memorial, 1922-1932, Alexandria, VA
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