Quest Magazine

Magus: The Art of Magic from Faustus to Agrippa   
Anthony Grafton
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2023. 289 pp., hardcover, $39.95.                       

According to social media, Renaissance men are all about us. We are encouraged to marvel at the linebacker who plays the violin, the crypto trader who writes novels, the stand-up comic who is a very deep thinker offstage.

Such well-rounded individuals are worthy of note and arguably models for those of us who never dream of picking up fiddle or pen. But we forget what the “Renaissance” part of “Renaissance man” actually means. Princeton University’s Grafton, a connoisseur of arcane arts and uncanny people, reminds us in this extraordinarily Renaissance-worthy book.

His Renaissance men—and yes, they are all men—are so multitalented, they are scary. They were scary 500 years ago. Grafton’s fifteenth- and sixteenth-century figures mastered virtually every art or science we can imagine, including the seven liberal ones of academic culture and the many forbidden ones embedded in intersecting cultural networks of their own. They wrote in Latin and Latinized their names, and some knew Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic. Some were also rumored to be fluent in the strange tongues of tossed dice, flowing water, sneezes, burning wood, human palms, shoulder blades, and spirit guests. They traversed Europe when the continent was splitting into Catholic and Protestant factions, at times eluding the then still fluid categories and often barely evading inquisitor, censor, and mob. Some found work in universities or courts, while others sought refuge in monastic undergrounds stocked with lavish occult libraries. All blurred the lines between philosopher and physician, artist and alchemist, doyen and deviant, scientist and sorcerer. Grafton describes them as the makers of early modern learned or “natural” magic. Their social role he defines as “magus.”

Five personalities and their intellectually adventurous and avaricious lives dominate Grafton’s narrative of Renaissance highbrow magic. Pico della Mirandola, famous for his Oration on the Dignity of Man and his advocacy of Christian Kabbalah, is recognizable to veterans of undergraduate Western civilization surveys. Doctor Faustus, likely the itinerant schoolmaster and university lecturer Georg of Helmstadt, accused of sexual misconduct and necromancy, is the most legendary. The others—Marsilio Ficino, priest and translator of the Hermetic Corpus; Johannes Trithemius, Benedictine abbot and cryptographer; and Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, dubbed the “Archimagus” by a Jesuit opponent—are major if less-known forces in the Western esoteric tradition. What unites them all is the intellectual libido to know hidden things and the conviction that truth is one. Inexplicably, England’s John Dee receives only minimal treatment. Nostradamus and Paracelsus are not mentioned at all.

Grafton’s magi trafficked in ideas, and his book leaves no theory or debate unexamined. But, despite occasional voyages into other worlds, they also lived as embodied beings in specific social circumstances. Here Grafton excels as guide to both text and context. The very first chapter sets the stage as Faustus arrives for dinner at the Wittenberg home of Philip Melanchthon, Martin Luther’s humanistically inclined fellow Reformer.

Boundary crossing was evidently part of the magic of the magi. They sought the patronage of princes and produced erudite tomes for the literati but were also well acquainted with the fingernails, boiled urine, and bat’s blood of folk practitioners. Likewise, they displayed gifts for intellectual shapeshifting, arguing in the same book for and against a cherished thesis. Their “inky fingers” (title of another Grafton publication) reveal them straddling medieval and modern, producing manuscripts by hand and printing books by machine.   

Other boundaries transgressed include those separating Christianity from paganism, Judaism, and Islam; the line between piety and power; and the watery frontier between Europe and what Trithemius called “the islands and regions recently discovered by Amerigo Vespucci in the western ocean.” For Grafton, the magi’s supreme overcoming may have been their storming of the barricade between “engineering and conjuring.” At home with flights of mental fancy, they were also fascinated, and facile, with the down-to-earth and public manufacture of mechanical clocks, magic lanterns, war machines, and automata that could move, speak, and spit fire.

Hence the “grammar and glamor” of the Renaissance magus. With his own blend of scholarship and showmanship, Grafton recreates the complex and alluring world of early modern esoterica. Sharing the magi’s venerable backward gaze, he sketches their unofficial fellowship and traces its lineage to medieval mentors, if not to Egypt, Persia, and Mount Sinai. Some readers might be disappointed that, aside from occasional glances forward, he does not connect the dots to the likes of Swedenborg, Éliphas Lévi, H.P. Blavatsky, Aleister Crowley, or any of the alleged Renaissance personages lauded by today’s influencers and content creators. His touching memorial to his late wife, however, suggests he may not have been too far removed from the magus’s realm.

Reading Grafton’s magisterial work requires the discipline of the scribes he so admires. The reward is an unforgettable reminder of an age when wisdom and wizardry were one.

Peter A. Huff, author or editor of seven books, teaches religious history at Benedictine University. His article “The Current State of Unbelief” appeared in Quest, spring 2022.                

Maurice Nicoll: Forgotten Teacher of the Fourth Way
Gary Lachman
Rochester, Vt.: Inner Traditions, 2024. 453 pp., hardcover, $35.

Gary Lachman’s description of Dr. Maurice Nicoll extols a man caught up in a time of intellectual and spiritual ferment. Freudianism, psychoanalysis, spiritualism, freethinker communes, and New Thought were all blossoming in his era: the early twentieth century.

Born in 1884, active through World War II up to his death in 1953, Nicoll was a Scottish neurologist and Jungian therapist who became an advocate of G.I. Gurdjieff’s Fourth Way. Nicoll eventually evolved his own brand of mysticism, tooled of equal parts Fourth Way, the Hermetica, Jacob Boehme, Greek philosophy, William Blake, Emanuel Swedenborg, and owing something to Theosophy. He taught with eloquence and insight at institute centers inspired by Gurdjieff’s Prieuré and P.D. Ouspensky’s country house. Not only was Nicoll afflicted with “institute-itis,” as Lachman likes to call it, he wrote extensively over the years, including fiction for The Strand Magazine and a successful novel. More significantly, he penned his five-volume Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky. 

Lachman emphasizes the inner disquiet—a sense that something important is missing—that prompts seekers to pursue the rather arduous Gurdjieffian path, and he sees many levels of disquiet in Maurice Nicoll. A neurologist and psychoanalyst, he could have prospered as a Harley Street physician and whiled away his life in middle-class ease. But Nicoll was forever searching for a way into the next level, an escape from the trapped routine that characterizes adult life. Lachman suggests that Nicoll may have had a kind of puer aeternus—eternal child—syndrome. He certainly had other psychological peculiarities, which drove him into the world of psychoanalysis, dream interpretation, and self-study.

A principal problem for Nicoll was his curious sexual fixation. As Lachman discovered (having gotten permission from the estate to slog through Nicoll’s multivolume private diary), this gentlemanly, portly, snooty physician struggled with compulsively envisioning the sexual degradation of women and an equally obsessive regimen of masturbation. As a psychologist, he knew the fantasies were unhealthy, and he agonized over them. For a time, he attempted to use the energy of his sessions of intense onanism for contacting higher spiritual powers. All this he kept secret, and we’re not aware of his having shared it with his own analyst, Carl Jung. Lachman offers no evidence that Nicoll ever acted on his fantasies.

One of the most rewarding parts of the Nicoll biography is his extensive association with the famous quasi-mystic and theorist of archetypes Carl Jung, who was godfather to Nicoll’s only child. Lachman details Jung’s break with Sigmund Freud, and Nicoll was apparently swept in the slipstream of Jung’s departure from Freudian psychoanalysis. Nicoll introduced Jung to London society, and for a time shared a house with him. Lachman suggests Nicoll had fallen victim to projection, turning Jung into a father figure: Nicoll’s relationship with his staid pastor of a father was iffy.

Jung’s overly sardonic presence led to a breakup between the two men. Left rudderless, Nicoll searched for another teacher, encountering Ouspensky’s lectures on the fourth dimension and his systemization of the Gurdjieff’s Fourth Way. Both Nicoll and his wife, Catherine, were struck by the Gurdjieffian ideas of humankind’s sleep, even though we suppose we’re awake—our utter mechanical reactivity and lack of inward unity. After steeping in Ouspensky for a time, Nicoll spent several seasons with Gurdjieff in the rigors of his institute outside Paris, an experience he found both taxing and transformative. On returning to England, Nicoll dealt with his father’s estate and began piecing together his own institute.

Lachman takes us through Nicoll’s dizzying hammering-together of a country institute for the study of the Fourth Way, onward through the advent of World War II and the Blitz, and how Nicoll and his followers worked in something like communality to survive together. As Nicoll aged, he seems to have drifted into something more syncretistic and less purely Gurdjieffian. As Lachman tells it, the sunnier spiritual climes of Swedenborg’s visions drew him, and by the end of his life he was perhaps more Swedenborgian than Gurdjieffian.

Nicoll could be a snob: he does not seem to have encouraged working-class persons or people of color into his spiritual school. While he left an indelible mark with his esoteric interpretations of the New Testament in The New Man and The Mark, his powerful classic Living Time, and his Psychological Commentaries, some present-day Nicoll enthusiasts may be annoyed by Lachman’s feet-of-clay revelations: Nicoll’s classism, sexual obsessions, and alcoholism might put off some readers. We see in Lachman the influence of Colin Wilson, and there is a certain tendency to sensationalism here. Gurdjieffians might be annoyed with Lachman’s repeating of some canards—for example, the mistaken notion that Gurdjieff did not successfully help anyone transform themselves. But Lachman’s impressive notating, his extensive background as a chronicler of esoteric spirituality, and his insights into his subject’s character carries the book. It is more than worthwhile, if one does not expect complete and total accuracy in every regard. The esoteric is, after all, mysterious.

John Shirley

John Shirley is the author of Gurdjieff: An Introduction to His Life and Ideas, as well as numerous works of fiction.

Printed in the  Winter 2025  issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Georgiades, Erica; McDavid, Doss "The Franz Hartmann Collection"   Quest 113:1, pg 8-9

By Erica Georgiades and Doss McDavid

The Franz Hartmann Collection is a groundbreaking project that aims to put together in a comprehensive and accessible form the writings of the Theosophist, mystic, and physician Franz Hartmann (1838‒1912). Hartmann, who was a close associate of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and Henry Steel Olcott, played a significant role in the development and popularization of Theosophy in Germany. His diverse body of work, which includes writings on Theosophy, Christian mysticism, Masonry, Rosicrucianism, and alternative medicine, has been a source of inspiration for many.

A drawing by HPB, from the collection of Franz Hartmann. Hartmann writes: "She sometimes drew caricatures that were  not without artistic value and portraits that were easily recongnizable. One such represents the examination for initiation of a proninent member of the T.S.  He is evidenty unable to answer the questions asked of him by K.H. and he looks with a wistful eye at a bottle of chamagne and a dancing girl, as if he were very loath to abandon the pleasures of this life. An elemental holds a candle and in the distance is the Master M. and still further on Madame Blavasky herself sitting on an elephant."Reproduced in Hartmann's autobiographu in his Ouline of the Secret Doctrine.

Despite the profound impact of Hartmann’s work, his writings have never been compiled in a comprehensive manner until now. The Franz Hartmann Collection, launched in 2022, seeks to rectify this oversight by publishing the entirety of Hartmann’s works in both book and web format. Currently consisting of eleven volumes, the collection covers a wide range of topics, from An Adventure among the Gnomes to Hermetic Stories for Children. It also features three volumes translated for the first time from German to English by TSA board member Susanne Hoepfl-Wellenhofer: Yoga and Christianity; Mysteries, Symbols, and Occult Forces; and An Outline of the Secret Doctrine. One highlight of the collection is the inclusion, on its website, of hundreds of articles and books by Hartmann that have been translated into English for the first time by Robert Hütwohl. The collection is far from complete and is an ongoing work, with four more volumes underway.

This extensive collection of works provides a wealth of knowledge and insight into Hartmann’s teachings and philosophy, making it an invaluable resource for scholars, researchers, and enthusiasts alike. Visitors to the collection’s website, www.franzhartmann.eu, can explore the full range of Hartmann’s writings, gaining a comprehensive understanding of his contributions to the fields of mysticism, Theosophy, and alternative medicine.

The significance of the Franz Hartmann Collection extends beyond merely compiling Hartmann’s writings: it also serves to shine a light on the impact and legacy of this influential figure. It highlights the importance of preserving and reprinting the early work of Theosophists, contributing in this way to the preservation of Theosophical history. By making Hartmann’s works more accessible and readily available, the collection seeks to ensure that his works continue to inspire and educate future generations of individuals interested in esoteric and spiritual knowledge.

The collection exemplifies a passion for preserving and disseminating valuable knowledge. The meticulous effort put into translating and compiling Hartmann’s works for the Franz Hartmann Collection is a testament to the dedication and commitment of those involved in the project. Thanks to Susanne Hoepfl-Wellenhofer and Robert Hütwohl, who have worked tirelessly to bring Hartmann’s writings into the English language.

The team involved in the project consists of Doss McDavid, Erica Georgiades, Juliet Bates, Ifigeneia Kastamoniti, Susanne Hoepfl-Wellenhofer, and Robert Hütwohl. 

Erica Georgiades is the director of the European School of Theosophy and the School of Wisdom. She is also the president of the Theosophical Society in Greece.

Doss McDavid has been a member of the Theosophical Society since 1969.  He is a professor emeritus at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.

Printed in the  Winter 2025  issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Sugg, Judith, "Unbecoming"   Quest 113:1, pg 40-42

By Judith Sugg

What is this elusive entity called personality? Psychology offers explanations, such as character traits and consistent patterns of thinking, feeling, and behavior. Personality is what an individual does consistently and will likely do in the future.

Yoga tells us that lifetimes create patterns, even knots, in the body that require release in order to be free of their influence. The most essential patterns are those of misunderstanding the nature of Reality, leading to confusion and pain. We see ourselves as what is contained inside our skin and thus as separate and subject to the memories, imaginings, fears, and longings of our ever-changing mind and body. With intent and practice, we sufficiently settle the mind to become open and still.

Spiritual traditions often describe personality as something to be dropped, dissolved, released, or freed of. It was an aha moment for me when a wise Theosophist said of an ongoing dispute, “It’s just their personalities.” This statement acknowledged the conflict, the agents, and the distinction between personality and the ever-present Spirit.

We believe that the entity bearing our name is real and special. For young children, this is a part of normal development and an aid to navigating the world. As adults, it is so profoundly wound into our psyche, so unconscious, that we are startled by events that demonstrate the contrary.

Many of our fondest desires center on having others recognize our specialness. In our minds, whether we are happy or suffering, we are the center, the star of the show, and the focus of attention. Being special means that we exist in comparison to others. We feel joy when we are ahead or feel anger or sorrow when we are behind. We take the self-talk in our head as reality, so we remain isolated.

Personality is a handy concept. If I know your tendencies, I predict that you will be agreeable, dependable, likely to succeed, open to ideas, fearful, steady, or changeable. As others respond to our personality, the illusion solidifies. That feeling of “this is like me” is a sense of security, whether we like the “me” or not. The more we engage in this “me” role, the dearer it becomes. What I do right belongs to me. When I suffer, it is because I am misunderstood. It seems impossible to step out of the drama of the role and see personality for what it is: imaginary.

 A Course in Miracles describes specialness as the grand illusion of existence and the “great dictator of wrong decisions.” Could we hate if we were not in competition? Could I be special if I didn’t define the “other” as someone to compete with? “To value specialness is to esteem an alien will to which illusions of yourself are dearer than the truth” (A Course in Miracles, Text, 502).

Spiritual teachings often advise against taking this personality seriously—it’s a lie, a confusion, an error. We spend time and energy improving our body, mind, health, and economics. Sometimes we seek to strengthen relationships and find alignment with a spiritual or philosophical system that seems to confirm our views. We build what we deem is good in our character. Yet spiritual teachings also call us to leave these patterns in the dust. They call us to relinquish our specialness and become the light we always were but haven’t been able to imagine. How do we harmonize these seemingly disparate goals?

Jean Klein, a spiritual teacher in the Hindu Advaita Vedanta tradition, would say that becoming is the issue. We are almost always in the becoming mode; we are never just here. We search for experience, not truth. We desire many things, feelings, and achievements. But when we finally get the object of desire, it has little meaning.

There is an old story of a student asking the master how long it takes to be enlightened. The master says, “Five years.” The student asks, “But what if I really try?” The master says, “Ten years.” In Klein’s terminology, setting the goal (faster enlightenment) sets the student in the becoming mode, waiting for the next experience, and thus sets up the pattern that sustains the personality.

Experience is not Reality. An experience may be incredible, and yoga, meditation, prayer, hypnosis, singing, drugs, and other things can give us an experience of peace and joy. We like that experience—I like that experience. But the experience too is measured on the scale of like and dislike, and we don’t break free. In fact, we addict ourselves to the experience. We let the experience of a positive emotion, like love, joy, or peace, become an object of desire.

As a yoga teacher of thirty years, I love the happiness and release the practice brings. I also love seeing students have their own experiences of joy and stress release. As wonderful as that is, it is not freedom from the judging mind. It is still pleasant versus unpleasant, good or bad, and it is still the tyranny of personality.

Klein views discernment as “the only decisive fact in knowledge” (Klein, Be Who You Are, 63). Although he offers no formulas or prescriptions, he speaks of discrimination as an essential act. The mind can learn to discriminate between ego/personality and what is not. What is not the personality is impersonal, present, transparent, curious, alive, and open. Judgment relies on memory and creates more memory, more fuel. “Triumph is what fortifies the ego, and disaster is what destroys it. Now, the ego is an error. The error of separatism, of the wave which takes itself to be distinct from the ocean” (Klein, Be Who You Are, 68).

The distinction between what is Real and what is not is at the heart of the teachings of the Samkhya, another school of Hindu philosophy. Samkhya is usually translated as enumeration. Discernment is the reason for enumerating all the aspects that are not pure consciousness. Why enumerate them? So one knows what is not Real. The study of these enumerated principles “implies much more than ordinary study. It implies, rather, a fundamental change in the back orientation of a man. It implies a kind of intuitive realization or discrimination which separates out pure consciousness from everything that is not consciousness” (Larson, 205).

Klein offers some practical advice on avoiding the trap of experience and the mental cycle of judgment. He advocates moment-by-moment observation of oneself. Observing oneself involves psychological separation, stepping out of one’s shoes and emotions, and witnessing the cycle of reaction and desire. As long as we are caught in these cycles, we are trapped in becoming something, getting happiness, staying safe, avoiding pain, gaining attention—whatever our conditioning entails. The cycles don’t end; they create more reactions, projections, and desires.

Eventually, without intervention or intention, a “certain elimination” occurs, and what is left to observe subsides into nothingness. There is a loss of fascination with the desires of the personality. Our attention is no longer gripped by whatever arises, and increased clarity, honesty, and stillness arise. There is less like and dislike, good and bad, winning or losing.

Personality does what it has always done: comparing, judging, desiring, being disappointed, constantly becoming, obtaining, reaching. In other words, we are never here right now. How is it possible to halt the return to the old self?

As a society, we pay attention to the body in terms of looks and health. We pay scant attention to the connection of thought and body. Although any reaction results in both thought and a contraction in the body, we overlook the indicators of the body and the resulting emotions. We read tension in the belly as fear, then we hold on to the fear with thoughts and images in our minds. What is your favorite way of stopping that transformation?

When we meditate, drama subsides. We feel uplifted, open, free, and compassionate. Meditation training allows us to slow down and step back out of the habit of reaction. We note the gigantic distances between the end of one breath and the beginning of the next, and we drop into more presence. With the help of distance and perspective, we take time to assess what is happening. We note the reaction of the body, not just the mind, and we consciously release the body’s tension and contraction. We return to the present.

Klein spent much time developing deep and minute relaxation at the body level—not to feel good, but to allow the body to fulfill its function. The deep practices of savasana or yoga nidra begin this journey. However, they are still experiences; they are not complete or permanent.

Imagine a scene where another person is extravagantly praised in your presence for actions you have done. Notice the thought, which may be akin to anger or jealousy. Observe the contraction and the emotional irritation. Use the muscle of discrimination to slow down and notice the pattern, the cycle of reactions, and the tension. What is this truly about? What is the underlying need at a psychological level? Is it a bid for attention? Is it self-criticism? Safety? Peace? Psychological understanding is vital in the moment. We want to be noticed so we feel loved. We want to ensure safety and feel complete. Whatever convoluted strategies we use to feel good psychologically, acknowledging the need helps unwind the cycle and the conditioning.

Examining these needs and tracing them to their core provides release and peace. Yet, it is still the experience of the personality. What translates this into the ultimate discrimination of Real and not real? Klein offers only subtle pointers but emphasizes that detachment from the personality means the absence of desire, because we have realized that what we desire will never keep its promises. The moment-to-moment releasing of conditioning, the relinquishment of goals, the escape from comparison and competition, and the letting go of distinction, of specialness, are all a part of it. When we let go of becoming, we are.

Try this experiment: Remember a slightly disturbing interaction with one person. As you remember, in your mind’s eye, bring the other person to your eye level. Look at them directly at eye level. This isn’t about height or actual discrepancy; it is about how we remember someone as above us or beneath us. It’s how we identify whether a person is better, more powerful, or less. Bringing them to eye level in our memory is a small step in releasing habits of comparison.

Reading Klein is like reading a hologram: it is whole in each part. It reflects the spirit he brought to his teaching, the presence he extends through his words. His highest teaching is stillness in the silence of listening (much like the inner sound that kills the outer in The Voice of the Silence). Klein notes that when our senses are free of motive, they no longer belong to the body. Attention without qualification appears as a global presence: “In the end even hearing and seeing dissolve into this presence and you are one with it. Ultimately there is no longer a subject who sees nor an object which is seen. There is only oneness” (Klein, Ease of Being, 7).

Sources

A Course in Miracles. 3d ed. Tiburon, Calif.: Foundation for Inner Peace, 2007.

Klein, Jean. Be Who You Are. Oakland, Calif.: Non-Duality Press, 1978.

———. The Book of Listening. Oakland, Calif.: Non-Duality Press, 2008.

———. The Ease of Being. Salisbury, U.K.: New Sarum Press, 2020.

———. Who Am I? The Sacred Quest. Longmead, U.K.: Element, 1988.

Larson, Gerald. Classical Samkhya. New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 2011.

Judith Sugg, PhD, is a counselor, psychology instructor, and yoga teacher. Her graduate work was in the psychology of yoga and the Samkhya, and she wrote the Study Guide for the Yoga Sutras for the Theosophical Society.