THE DEATH OF HYPATIA AND CIVILIZATION AS PROPHESIZED BY HERMES VERY ACCURATELY.
One early spring day during the year 415 in the city of Alexandria—the intellectual heart of the waning Roman Empire—the pagan philosopher Hypatia was murdered by a mob of Christian men. These men, the parabalani , were a volunteer militia of monks serving as henchmen to the archbishop. Their conscripted purpose was to aid the dead and dying but they could be more readily found terrorizing opposing Christian groups and leveling pagan temples. At the urging of Cyril, bishop of Alexandria, they had already destroyed the remains of the Library of Alexandria. The parabalani razed pagan temples, attacked the Jewish quarters, and defiled masterpieces of ancient art they considered demonic by mutilating statues and melting them down for gold. They now set their gaze on the city’s beloved teacher of mathematics and philosophy, whose social ranking was on par with Alexandria’s most important men. Understanding nothing of her philosophy, they called her a witch. They pulled the elderly teacher from her chariot as she rode through the city and dragged her to a temple. She was stripped naked, her skin flayed with jagged pieces of oyster shells, her limbs pulled from her body and paraded through the streets. Her remains were burned in a mockery of pagan sacrifice.
Hypatia’s death marked the end of paganism and the triumph of Christianity, the final act of a one-hundred-year-old feud waged by the new religion against the ancient world.
Hypatia was born around 355 into the Roman elite and educated by her famed mathematician father Theon; she would live in his house and work alongside him for her entire life. A woman in philosophical circles was a rarity in the classical world, although there were occasions of women achieving recognition in the arts and sciences when born to a remarkable father who had no sons. Her sex no doubt irked her zealous Christian adversaries, who were fixated on restricting women’s influence. But men in her field respected her, even if mentioning that she was not a man was a necessity in their praise. “On account of the self-possession and ease of manner, which she had acquired in consequence of the cultivation of her mind, she not infrequently appeared in public in presence of the magistrates,” wrote Socrates Scholasticus, her contemporary in Constantinople. “Neither did she feel abashed in going to an assembly of men. For all men on account of her extraordinary dignity and virtue admired her the more.”
Hypatia eclipsed all the scholars of her own time with her achievements in mathematics and philosophy. Around 400 she became head of the Platonist school in Alexandria, where she taught wealthy young men (all her students were men) sent from faraway corners of the empire to receive the best education money could buy. Alexandrian schools were not divided by religion; she taught both Christians and pagans, making allies of both. She was cautious about taking sides in the power struggle between Christianity and the ancient world and took a more transcendent approach toward spirituality. Though sympathetic to the new religion, with several close friends rising to prominence in the church, Hypatia viewed herself as a philosopher and was therefore classified as pagan; classical education and paganism were intimately linked. In addition to teaching she gave public lectures attended by government officials seeking her advice on municipal matters, part of an older tradition of politicians consulting philosophers about how to rule. She was aristocratic and influential, but her popularity would inspire a fatal envy in the bishop.
Dialogue Between Hermes Trismegistus and
Asclepius
source : http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/sunrise/29-79-80/rel-prof.htm
From Hermetica: The Ancient Greek and Latin Writings which contain Religious or Philosophical Teachings ascribed to Hermes Trismegistus 1:341-7; translated into English by Walter Scott from a Latin text, itself a translation attributed to Apuleius from a Greek original which is now lost.
Do you not know, Asclepius, that Egypt is an image of heaven, or, to speak more exactly, in Egypt all the operations of the powers which rule and work in heaven have been transferred to earth below? Nay, it should rather be said that the whole Kosmos dwells in this our land as in its sanctuary. And yet, since it is fitting that wise men should have knowledge of all events before they come to pass, you must not be left in ignorance of this: there will come a time when it will be seen that in vain have the Egyptians honored the deity with heartfelt piety and assiduous service; and all our holy worship will be found bootless and ineffectual. For the gods will return from earth to heaven; Egypt will be forsaken, and the land which was once the home of religion will be left desolate, bereft of the presence of its deities. . . .
In that day will our most holy land, this land of shrines and temples, be filled with funerals and corpses. Tothee , most holy
Nile, I cry, to thee I foretell that which shall be; swollen with torrents of
blood, thou wilt rise to the level of thy banks, and thy sacred waves will be
not only stained, but utterly fouled with gore. Do you weep at this, Asclepius?
There is worse to come; Egypt herself will have yet more to suffer; she will
fall into a far more piteous plight, and will be infected with yet more
grievous plagues; . . . The
dead will far outnumber the living; and the survivors will be known for
Egyptians by their tongue alone, but in their actions they will seem to be men
of another race.
O Egypt, Egypt, ofthy religion nothing will
remain but an empty tale , which thine own children in time to come will not
believe; nothing will be left but graven words, and only the stones will tell
of thy piety. And in that day men will be weary of life, and they will cease to
think the universe worthy of reverent wonder and of worship. And so religion,
the greatest of all blessings — for there is nothing, nor has been, nor ever
shall be, that can be deemed a greater boon — will be threatened with
destruction; men will think it a burden, and will come to scorn it. They will
no longer love this world around us, this incomparable work of God, this
glorious structure which he has built, this sum of good made up of things of
many diverse forms, this instrument whereby the will of God operates in that
which he has made, ungrudgingly favoring man's welfare, this combination and
accumulation of all the manifold things that can call forth the veneration,
praise, and love of the beholder. Darkness will be preferred to light, and death will be thought more
profitable than life; no one will raise his eyes to heaven; the pious will be deemed insane,
and the impious wise; the
madman will be thought a brave man, and the wicked will be esteemed as good.
As to the soul, and the belief that it is immortal by nature, or may hope to attain to immortality, as I have taught you — all this they will mock at, and will even persuade themselves that it is false. No word of reverence or piety, no utterance worthy of heaven and of the gods of heaven, will be heard or believed.
And so the gods will depart from mankind — a grievous thing! —and only evil angels will remain, who will mingle with men,
and drive the poor wretches by main force into all manner of reckless crime,
into wars, and robberies, and frauds, and all things hostile to the nature of
the soul. Then will the earth no longer stand unshaken, and the sea will bear
no ships; heaven will not support the stars in their orbits, nor will the stars
pursue their constant course in heaven; all voices of the gods will of
necessity be silenced and dumb; the fruits of the earth will rot; the soil will
turn barren, and the very air will sicken in sullen stagnation. After this
manner will old age come upon the world. Religion will be no more; all things
will be disordered and awry; all good will disappear.
But when all this has befallen, Asclepius, then the Master and Father, God, the first before all, the maker of that god who first came into being, will look on that which has come to pass, and will stay the disorder by thecounterworking of his will, which is the good . He will
call back to the right path those who have gone astray; he will cleanse the
world from evil, now washing it away with waterfloods , now burning it out with
fiercest fire, or again expelling it by war and pestilence. And thus he will
bring back his world to its former aspect, so that the Kosmos will once more be
deemed worthy of worship and wondering reverence, and God, the maker and
restorer of the mighty fabric, will be adored by the men of that day with
unceasing hymns of praise and blessing. Such is the new birth of the Kosmos; it
is a making again of all things good, a holy and awe-striking restoration of
all nature; and it is wrought in the process of time by the eternal will of
God.
For God's will has no beginning; it is ever the same, and as it now is, even so it has ever been, without beginning.
From Hermetica: The Ancient Greek and Latin Writings which contain Religious or Philosophical Teachings ascribed to Hermes Trismegistus 1:341-7; translated into English by Walter Scott from a Latin text, itself a translation attributed to Apuleius from a Greek original which is now lost.
Do you not know, Asclepius, that Egypt is an image of heaven, or, to speak more exactly, in Egypt all the operations of the powers which rule and work in heaven have been transferred to earth below? Nay, it should rather be said that the whole Kosmos dwells in this our land as in its sanctuary. And yet, since it is fitting that wise men should have knowledge of all events before they come to pass, you must not be left in ignorance of this: there will come a time when it will be seen that in vain have the Egyptians honored the deity with heartfelt piety and assiduous service; and all our holy worship will be found bootless and ineffectual. For the gods will return from earth to heaven; Egypt will be forsaken, and the land which was once the home of religion will be left desolate, bereft of the presence of its deities. . . .
In that day will our most holy land, this land of shrines and temples, be filled with funerals and corpses. To
O Egypt, Egypt, of
As to the soul, and the belief that it is immortal by nature, or may hope to attain to immortality, as I have taught you — all this they will mock at, and will even persuade themselves that it is false. No word of reverence or piety, no utterance worthy of heaven and of the gods of heaven, will be heard or believed.
And so the gods will depart from mankind — a grievous thing! —
But when all this has befallen, Asclepius, then the Master and Father, God, the first before all, the maker of that god who first came into being, will look on that which has come to pass, and will stay the disorder by the
For God's will has no beginning; it is ever the same, and as it now is, even so it has ever been, without beginning.
From the Vishnu-Purana
Book IV, chapter
When the practices taught by the Vedas and the institutes of law shall nearly have ceased, and the close of the Kali age shall be nigh, a portion of that divine being who exists, of his own spiritual nature, in the character of Brahma, and who is the beginning and the end, and who comprehends all things, shall descend upon earth: he will be born in the family of Vishnuyasas — an eminent Brahman of Sambhala village — as Kalki, endowed with the eight superhuman faculties. By his irresistible might he will destroy all the Mlechchhas [foreigners] and thieves, and all whose minds are devoted to iniquity. He will, then, reestablish righteousness upon earth; and the minds of those who live at the end of the Kali age shall be awakened, and shall be as pellucid as crystal. The men who are, thus, changed by virtue of that peculiar time shall be as the seeds of human beings, and shall give birth to a race who shall follow the laws of the Krita age (or
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