INITIATION, ANACALYPSIS AND GNOSIS
IN THE EGYPTIAN OCCULTISM OF H. RIDER HAGGARD
Introduction
Sir Henry Rider Haggard (1856–1925) was one of the most prolific and popular author-novelists of his age. Although now remembered principally as the author of «She» (1887) and «King Solomon’s Mines» (1885), he penned fifty five other novels, a novella and collection of short stories,
and numerous works of non-fiction. Among the former are a series of «ro mances» set in ancient Egypt. Haggard was fascinated by Egypt[21], and his own brand of Egyptosophical speculation reflects the concerns and agendas of late Victorian Egyptology[22].
In this paper I shall focus on one of the above-mentioned romances, «Cleopatra», published in 1889[23], but shall refer briefly to other works where necessary. In Haggard’s reworking of the story of the historical Cleopatra VII «Thea Philopator», the young priest Harmachis is initiated into the Mysteries of Isis. He undergoes a series of mystical visions and experiences which manifest a gnostic ascent during the process of his initiation through what could be termed a «hierarchy of knowledge»[24] toward a final experience of anacalypsis – the combining and transcending of a figurative and literal unveiling of the goddess Isis before Harmachis, and his experience of mystical gnosis. In the following account I shall analyse the visionary process, and contextualise it within the occult milieu of the Victorian fin de siècle. The visions progress along a mystical trajectory from kataphasis – with a panoramic recall of the history of Mankind in Egypt – through apophatic ecstasy, to an initiatic death and katabasis to the Underworld, and finally the anacalypsis of the goddess and mystical gnosis.
Kataphasis
The visions commence in the penetralia of the temple of Isis, where the young Harmachis is guided by an elderly priest. They begin with a vision of the Nile: «I saw the ancient Nile rolling through deserts to the sea. There were no men upon its banks, nor any signs of man, nor any temples to the Gods. Only wild birds moved on Sihor’s lonely face, and monstrous brutes plunged and wallowed in his waters. <…>. The picture passed and another rose up in its place. Once again I saw the banks of Sihor, and on them crowd ed wild-faced creatures, partaking of the nature of the ape more than of the nature of mankind. They fought and slew each other. <…> They stole and rent and murdered, dashing out the brains of children with axes of stone. And, though no voice told me, I knew that I saw man as he was tens of thousands of years ago, when first he marched across the earth» [Haggard 1894: 58].
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It appears then that dinosaurs of some kind wallow in the Nile, notably given its Old Testament name of «Sihor», as this is, nevertheless, a Victorian biblical Egypt[25]. For the purposes of this paper, one can safely avoid speculation as to the actual presence or prominence of the Nile in prehistoric times. Harmachis sees what are clearly intended to be creatures from Mankind’s anthropoidal ape-like past. In short, we are shown a contemporaneous scientific representation of a Darwinist image of human prehistory, revealed in the mystical vision of a priest of Isis in Ptolemaic Egypt.
The images are strikingly similar to the following passage from Helena Petrovna Blavatsky’s «Isis Unveiled» (1877) which documents an experiment in «clairvoyant psychometry» using a piece of prehistoric bone: «Professor Denton submitted a fragment of fossilized bone to his wife’s examination, without giving Mrs Denton any hint as to what the article was. It immediately called up to her pictures of people and scenes which he thinks belonged to the stone age. She saw men closely resembling monkeys, with a body very hairy, and “as if the natural hair answered the purpose of clothing“. “I question whether he can stand perfectly upright; his joints appear to be so formed, he cannot,“ <…> Now I see a face like that of a human, though there is a monkey-like appearance about it. All these seem of that kind, having long arms and hairy bodies» [Blavatsky 1998: 295].
In a later work «Clairvoyance» (1903), Charles Webster Leadbeater (1854–1934), the later systematiser and interpreter of Blavatsky describes the experience of access to what is called in Theosophical terminology the «Akashic Record»[26], the «Astral Light» which Blavatsky derived from Eliphas Lévi[27], upon which a record of all cosmic events is inscribed. The pas sage reads: «When the visitor to the <Astral> plane is not thinking of them specifically in any way, the records simply form a background to whatever is going on, just as the reflections in a pier-glass at the end of the room might form a background to the life of the people in it. It must always be born in mind that under these conditions they are merely reflections from the ceaseless activity of a great Consciousness upon a far higher plane, and have very much the appearance of an endless succession of the recently invented cinematographe, or living photographs. They do not melt into one another like dissolving views, nor do a series of ordinary pictures follow one another; but the action of the reflected figures goes on as though one were watching the actors on a distant stage» [Leadbeater 1903: 115–116].
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Haggard was not only familiar with the technique of psychometry, but uses the term and – via his young protagonist- demonstrates the procedure in «Love Eternal» (1918a)[28]. I would argue therefore that the initial components of Harmachis’ visions seem to be very much representative of the Theosophically prescribed attainment of Astral consciousness. Although the process may relate to Theosophy, Haggard has clearly departed from Blavatskyan evolutionary theory. Blavatsky promulgated a form of spiritual evolution, describing Man’s progressive development from ethereal angelic beings through various so-called root and sub-root races[29]: an evolution of acquired characteristics which was therefore in a Lamarckian[30] rather than Darwinian mode.
Harmachis’ visions continue to advance epoch by epoch until the pre sumed time when the gods ruled in Egypt. Although there is initially something of a Golden Age, men are seduced by evil and Harmachis witnesses the murder and dismemberment of Osiris by Set, and his subsequent resurrection assisted by the goddess Isis: «And I understood that what I had beheld was the holy vision of the struggle between the Good and Evil Powers. I saw that man was created vile, but Those who are above took pity on him, and came down to make him good <...> But man returned to his wicked way, and then the bright Spirit of Good, who is of us called Osiris, but who has many names, offered himself up for the evil doing of the race that had dethroned him» [Haggard 1894: 60].
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Here the influence of Rider Haggard’s friend and colleague Sir Ernest Arthur Thompson Wallis Budge (1857–1934) is manifestly obvious in the text. Budge was the Keeper of the Department of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities at the British Museum between 1894 and 1924. His Egyptology was characterised by a marked Christian inflection. This in turn reflected the biases, agendas and proclivities of Victorian Egyptology as a whole, which in the last quarter of the nineteenth century was striving to find evidence of Biblical narratives in Egypt, in the face of Higher Biblical Criticism, the rise of scientific empiricism and Darwinian evolutionary theory.
Amongst other Christianised elements, Budge’s work presents what I have elected to term an Osiride Christology, where Osiris is presented as a type of Christ the Redeemer – a Christ in an Atef Crown. In «Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection» (1911) Budge notes that: «Both Plutarch and Diodorus agree in assigning a divine origin to Osiris, and both state that he reigned in the form of a man upon the earth. This being so it is clear that Egyptians generally believed that a god made himself incarnate, and that an immediate ancestor of the first Pharaoh of Egypt as a being who possessed two natures, the one human and the other divine. As a man he performed the good works which his divine nature indicated to him» [Wallis Budge 1911: 16].
In his «Egyptian Magic» (1901), Budge observes that Osiris «was of divine origin, but had lived upon the earth, and had suffered a cruel death at the hands of his enemies, and had risen from the dead, and had become the God and king of the world which is beyond the grave» [Ibid.: xiii]. This idea, then, amongst others was directly adopted by Haggard. To emphasise the point, Haggard goes on to tell the reader, through the voice of Harma-
chis that «the mummy cloths of symbol and of ceremony that wrap Osiris round fell from him, and I understood the secret of religion, which is Sacrifice» [Haggard 1894: 60]. Here then, there is a clear statement and assertion of the Christian doctrine of vicarious atonement, cast in the Egyptian idioms of the Isis-Osiris cycle. To continue, Harmachis now prepares for the next stages of his mystical ascent; the elderly priest departs leaving him alone in the temple. Haggard now unleashes a burst of mystical poetics in an attempt to convey a word image of wordless apophatic ecstasy.
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Apophasis
Harmachis invokes the goddess Isis: «”Isis, Holy Mother“, I prayed. “Isis, spouse of Heaven, come unto me, be with me now; I faint! Be with me now“. And then I knew that things were not as things had been. The air around me began to stir, it rustled as the wings of eagles rustle, it took life. Bright eyes gazed upon me, strange whispers shook my soul. Upon the darkness were bars of light. They changed and interchanged, they moved to and fro and wove mystic symbols which I could not read. Swifter and swifter flew that shuttle of light: the symbols grouped, gathered, faded, gathered again, faster and still more fast, till my eyes could count them no more. Now I was afloat upon a sea of glory; it surged and rolled, as the ocean rolls; it tossed me high, it brought me low. Glory was piled on glory, splendour heaped on splendour’s head, and I rode above it all! Soon the lights began to pale in the rolling sea of air. Great shadows shot across it, lines of darkness pierced it and rushed together on its breast, till, at length, I was only a Shape of Flame set like a star on the bosom of immeasurable night» [Haggard 1894: 62].
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