The Forbidden Universe Read Online Free PDF Page A

will be restored, and ‘stationed in a city founded at Egypt’s farthest border toward the setting sun, where the whole race of mortals will hasten by land and sea.’ 3
    Because the Hermetic books were believed to hail from the zenith of the Egyptian civilization, the Lament was seen as an authentically ancient prophecy. And since the time of their writing, it had come to pass that Egypt’s native religion had indeed been eclipsed: since Alexander the Great’s invasion in the fourth century BCE, the country had been under foreign domination – first Greeks, then Romans, then Christians and now Arabs. It stood to reason that if the first part of the prophecy was true, the second part might be also. The ancient gods might return, and a golden Hermetic city might be built that would draw the whole world to its magic.
    While most considered the Greeks and Romans as the interlopers responsible for crushing Egypt’s religion, Bruno singled out the Christians as the real villains. He may even have been right. Although the Greek and Roman overlords did import their own gods and cults, they also permitted the continued practice of religions native to the area. As we mentioned earlier, Clement of Alexandria witnessedprocessions of the Egyptian priests and priestesses, bearing the forty-two sacred books of Hermes, around the year 200. It was only when Christianity came to dominate in the fourth century that native Egyptian cults were ruthlessly persecuted and ultimately banned on pain of death. Bruno’s interpretation of the Lament required no uncanny knowledge on his part, since Christian writings of the time recorded the suppression of Egypt’s ‘demonic’ pagan cults with characteristic glee.
    What excited and motivated Bruno most, however, was his conviction that the second part of Hermes’ prediction – the restoration of the Egyptian religion and the return of the gods – would take place during his own lifetime. He interpreted the religious wars that were ripping Europe apart as the death throes of the faith that had suppressed the Hermetic religion. He also believed that Christianity was an offshoot of something much bigger and more ancient, despite it mistaking itself as the main event. Bruno did, however, admire the way of life Jesus taught, particularly the simplicity of the injunction to treat others as you yourself wish to be treated. (He seems to have regarded Jesus’s mission as an attempt to take the Jewish religion back to its Egyptian roots, which our own research indicates to be at least partly correct.) 4 In a statement made to the Inquisition at the time of his arrest, Bruno is reported to have said, ‘the Catholic religion pleases him more than any other, but that this too has need of great reform’. 5 He particularly deplored the way the Catholic Church sought to impose itself through ‘punishment and pain’; using force rather than love to keep its worshippers was a sure sign that something was terribly wrong.
    Yet even at its best, Bruno viewed Christianity as only an also-ran in the great race towards enlightenment and salvation. The ancient Hermetic religion of Egypt would soon assert its superior position when it returned to theEarth through the mediation of its greatest prophet, Bruno himself.
    Bruno believed that the great religious revolution on Earth would be preceded by upheavals in the heavens, reflecting the Hermetic principle (from the Emerald Tablet ) of ‘as below, so above/as above, so below’. Bruno moreover suggested an intriguing variation on this theme, namely that any changes would be echoed in a shift in mankind’s perception of the heavens. And this, he believed, unlocked the true significance of the heliocentric theory.
    For centuries the most learned of men had simply got cosmology wrong; Copernicus had shown that. But the Hermetic books, which Bruno believed preserved the most ancient wisdom of all, also stated that the sun was at the centre of all that mattered and