Ernest Scott The People of the Secret PDF
Preview Ernest Scott The People of the Secret
© ~ T h e P e o p l e o a l a e t n a DREAMWORKS SKG RESEARCH LIBRARY ad aa(ecias(ee)t ae Introduction by ColinWilson eo o Please return to _ Suzie Gueva — _DrearWorks SKG Research Library - a THE PEOPLE OF THE SECRET by ERNEST SCOTT Introduction by COLIN WILSON THE OCTAGON PRESS LONDON Copyright © 1983 by The Octagon Press Ltd All rights reserved Copyright throughout the world No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical or photographic, by recording or any information storage or retrieval system or method now known or to be invented or adapted, without prior permission obtained in writing from the publisher except by a reviewer quoting brief passages in a review written for inclusion in a journal, magazine, newspaper or broadcast. Requests for permission to reprint, reproduce, etc., to: Permissions Department, The Octagon Press Ltd., PO. Box 227, London N6 4EW, England ISBN 0 863040 38 1 First Published 1983 First Published in Paperback 1985 Printed and bound in Great Britain by Redwood Burn Limited, Trowbridge, Wiltshire ee ~ CONTENTS ’ Page Introduction CHAPTER The Hidden Tradition = A Secret Directorate? 39 The Inner Alliance: Rome, Christianity and Islam 53 The Vehicles: The Jewish Cabbala, the Tarot, eNOmD F Nostradamus 67 Love Courts, Troubadours and Round Tables 81 Alchemy: The Disguised Path | 105 What Gold did They Make? 129 Gurdjieff and the Inner Circle of Humanity 155 Freemasons, Sufis, Initiatory Societies 173 Assassins, Kali-Worshippers, Dervishes 192 Sufi Discourses, Rituals, Initiation 219 Science Fiction and the Ancient Tradition 232 13 The Executive of the People of the Secret 250 Appendix A Some Important Figures in the Sufi Tradition 254 AppendixB ‘The Khwajagan 260 INTRODUCTION Colin Wilson The notion of an ‘ancient wisdom”, guarded by hidden custodians or Masters, is usually attributed to that remarkable and inventive old lady Madame Blavatsky — perhaps because her disciple Annie Besant wrote a book of that title. And when, more than thirty years after her death, the Theosophical Society decided to publish The Mahatma Letters' — purportedly written by two oft hese ‘‘Masters”’ to A. P. Sinnett— most critics seemed to feel that Sinnett must have been singularly gullible to be taken in by them. The modern view of the matter is stated in Richard Cavendish’s Encyclopaedia of the Unexplained:? “Through the Theosophical Society the idea of an occult Master first became popular in the West. It was a glamorous simplification of the tradition common to both East and West from time immemorial, of the searching spirit who asked, ‘Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?’”’ In short, the Masters are the product of wishful thinking. The idea sounds eminently reasonable. What it fails to take into account is that the tradition is far more than as tory abouta “searching spirit” who wanted to be saved. It is a specific and widely held doctrine that can be traced throughout many centuries and many countries. And modern mythological science is inclined to believe that when a “‘legend”’ is as widespread as this — the Flood is another example — then it probably has at least some basis in reality. There can be no doubt, of course, that according to the ordinary laws of common sense, the whole idea is preposterous. Human beings possess the highest intelligence on the surface of this earth; and the highest human beings — certain teachers, priests, philosophers — have exhibited an intelligence that goes ' The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett, Ed. A. T. Barker, Theosophical Publishing House, London, 1932. ? Richard Cavendish, Encyclopaedia of the Unexplained: Magic, Occultism and Parapsychology, Routledge, London, 1974. . S fe 2 The People of the Secret far beyond that of “‘the mob” as the average human intelligence is beyond that of a chimpanzee or porpoise. The highest know- ledge we possess is to be found in the works and sayings of these philosophers and teachers. A book like Whitehead’s Adventure of Ideas3 deals with the impact of these ideas on civilization; and it explains the history of civilization perfectly adequately in terms of ideas. The notion of ‘‘hidden masters”’ seems superfluous. Worse still, it seems indefensible. Anyone can see that we would all like to believe in the existence of superhuman intelligences, because it would provide us with a comforting sense of meaning and purpose. We can recognize this element of wishful thinking in a poet like W. B. Yeats. As a young man, he found the real world — of Victorian London — crude and unbearable; so he insisted on the real existence of fairies. He also quotes Shelley’s lines about an old Jewish cabalist, hundreds of years old, who lives ‘‘in a sea cavern ’mid the Demonesi’’, and who May have attained to sovereignty and science Over those strong and secret things and thoughts Which others fear and know not . . ., and admits that he was attracted to the Theosophists because they insisted on the real existence of the old Jew and his like. Since this is so self-evident, how is it possible to defend the real existence of hidden masters — of the proposition that there exists “in some hidden centre, perhaps in the Highlands of Central Asia ... a colony of men possessing exceptional powers’”’, and that these men are “‘the secret government of the world’’? For this is, in fact, the central thesis of the present book, and it is argued with an intelligence and persuasiveness that leave no doubt that its author — a lifelong student of the so-called “occult sciences” — is fully aware of all the obvious objections to his thesis. He argues for this secret tradition, not because he thinks it ought to exist, but because he thinks there _1s convincing evidence that it probably does. Let me say at once that my own view on the matter is neutral. I found the book absorbing, and its erudition impressive. In my own book Mysteriest I have argued that alchemy cannot be dismissed as a crude form of chemistry, but needs to be 3A. N. Whitehead, Adventure of Ideas, C.U.P., Cambridge, 1933. * Colin Wilson, Mysteries, Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1978.
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