Western Paganism And Hermeticism

Myatt And The Renaissance of Western Culture

 Contents

° Preface
° Re-discovering Western Paganism
° An Insight Into Pagan Mysticism
° Regarding Myatt's Hermetica
° The Divine Pymander
° Myatt's Monas - A New Translation of Corpus Hermeticum IV
° On Native Egyptian Influence In The Corpus Hermeticum
° Suffering, Honour, And The Culture Of The West
° A New Pagan Metaphysics
° Appendix I - Concerning ἀγαθός and νοῦς in the Corpus Hermeticum
° Appendix II - A Review Of Myatt's 'Classical Paganism And The Christian Ethos'
Preface

    We present here a selection of recent articles about Western paganism and
hermeticism, indebted as those articles are to Myatt's translations of texts from
the ancient Corpus Hermeticism and his post-2013 writings such as his book
Classical Paganism And The Christian Ethos, for Myatt's thesis in that book is
that Western paganism is essentially the classical paganism of Ancient Greece
and Rome and represents the ethos of the culture of the West, which ethos the
Hebraic religion of Christianity supplanted. It is our view that those
translations, the associated commentaries, and such books enable an
understanding, and thus the renaissance, of Western culture.

As mentioned in one of the articles included here, the ethos of the West

"is the ethos, the pragmatic spirituality, and the notion of balance,
harmony, elegance, and of beauty, which infuses the culture and the
civilization of Ancient Greece and Rome, and which culture so
enthused those Europeans – artists, scholars, educators, potentates,
and others – who from the 14th century on brought about the
Renaissance and which Renaissance, which re-discovery of the culture
of ancient Greece and Rome, gave birth to and infused our Western
'Faustian' civilization."

However,

"In respect of rediscovering the pagan spirituality of the West a

fundamental problem has been a lack of knowledge among those
interested in what, exactly, that spirituality is. A problem exacerbated
by pre-existing translations of some of the ancient works knowledge of
which is necessary in order to understand that spirituality. Works such
as the Oedipus Tyrannus and the Antigone by Sophocles, the
Agamemnon by Aeschylus, and the mystical texts of the Corpus
Hermeticism."

Which is why the authors of the articles included in this compilation have
studied Myatt's translations of classical and hermetic texts, for his translations

"when studied together enable us to appreciate and understand the

classical, pagan, ethos and thence the ethos of the West itself."
Since

"what Myatt does in his translations [of the Corpus Hermeticum] is

paint of picture of classical – and of Hellenic – culture and especially
of Hellenic mysticism; a culture and a mysticism which is pagan and
based on individuals, on tangible things such as honesty, and not on
moralistic and religious and impersonal abstractions. That is, he
reveals the Greco-Roman ethos – the pagan ethos – underlying the
hermetic texts and which is in contrast to that of Christianity with its
later, medieval and Puritanical, impersonal moralizing."

Hence this compilation, and the references therein to Myatt's Classical

Paganism And The Christian Ethos, for in that work he provides examples from
classical literature and from the Corpus Hermeticum of the difference between
the pagan ethos of ancient Greece and Rome and the ethos of Christianity.

For context, we include as an appendix Myatt's essay Concerning ἀγαθός and

νοῦς in the Corpus Hermeticum. The internet sources referenced in the articles
were valid as of November 2017, and we have taken this opportunity to, with
the consent of the authors, update several of their sources.

This third edition includes an additional article, Suffering, Honour, And The
Culture Of The West.

T.W.S.
Third Edition
February 2018 ev
 Re-discovering Western Paganism

Whenever the term 'western paganism' is written or heard, in our contemporary

societies, there is tendency for many readers or listeners to conjure up either
images of ancient 'superstitious barbarians' offering sacrifices to various gods
such as Odin, or images of modern devotees – of what has been termed
'contemporary paganism' and 'neopaganism' – in robes conducting or attending
romanticized rituals and ceremonies such as those now associated with the
Summer Solstice at Stonehenge.

In this essay, however, in referring to Western paganism we are referring to a

particular and spiritual ethos – to a distinguishing character, or nature, or
'spirit' – germane to European lands and thus to 'the West', where by 'spiritual'
is meant concerning what is considered to be, intuitively or otherwise,
numinous, and/or concerning those forces or powers which are believed to be,
or which may, determine our fate, wyrd, destiny and thus which may bring good
fortune or misfortune to us, our family, and to our communities.

Hence, when writing about 'the West' we are not writing about the nations of
the modern West and the life-styles and politics evident in such modern nations
as the United States and Britain. What is meant is the culture and the
civilization of and associated with European lands (and with what are now our
former colonies or émigré lands) embodied and manifest as that culture and
civilization was and is in the paganism of classical Greece and Rome; in the
ritual practices and beliefs of North European lands such as Scandinavia and
ancient Britain; in Greco-Roman art; in classical – and European folk – music; in
the philosophy of the likes of Aristotle; in allegories such as those of Faust and
myths such as King Arthur, Wotan, and the Valkyries; in the Greco-Roman
mysticism of the Corpus Hermeticum, and in modern science and technology.

That is, we are writing about a particular culture of a particular people; of

indigenous Europeans, among whose descendants are people of such lands as
are now named Greece, Italy, Britain, Germany, Spain, France, Scandinavia,
Poland, Russia, etcetera.

Part of this ancestral Western, this ancestral European, culture is a particular

and spiritual ethos, and one which the term Western paganism correctly
describes, with this particular paganism having its roots in Ancient Greece and
Rome and thus being different, in ethos and in practise, from what is currently
known concerning, for example, such religious practices and beliefs as that of
ancient Germanic tribes. This 'Greco-Roman' paganism is the paganism of
Homer, Hesiod, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Aristotle, Seneca, and Cicero; a paganism
that is pragmatically spiritual whose foundation is the rationalization that
certain deeds were wise and certain other deeds unwise, with such unwise
deeds – such hubris, ὕβρις – upsetting that natural balance of the Cosmos
(κόσμος) and thus liable (according to ancestral tradition) to cause misfortune.
Thus did Sophocles express a truth of this tradition when he wrote that "hubris
is the genesis of tyrants" since tyrants invariably bring misfortune upon the
people and, eventually, upon themselves and – quite often – on their
descendants. In addition, and importantly, elegance, the beautiful (τὸ καλόν) as
well as excellence (arête, ἀρετή) and nobility (τὸ ἀγαθόν) were all associated
with those who did what was considered wise and balanced (μέσος, in
Aristotle).

This is the ethos, the pragmatic spirituality, and the notion of balance, harmony,
elegance, and of beauty, which infuses the culture and the civilization of Ancient
Greece and Rome, and which culture so enthused those Europeans – artists,
scholars, educators, potentates, and others – who from the 14th century on
brought about the Renaissance and which Renaissance, which re-discovery of
the culture of ancient Greece and Rome, gave birth to and infused our Western
'Faustian' civilization.

A Pagan Renaissance

This Renaissance, however, did not in any significant way include a practical
return to classical paganism. Instead of giving rise to a new, an evolved, pagan
ethos – and thus dispensing with the notion of anthropomorphic deities
interfering in the lives of human beings – it resulted in only minor changes to
the governing religious ethos manifest as that was in Christianity with its quite
un-classical, rather stark, notions of Hell-Fire, Damnation, Sin, and Prudery. In
other words, the governing spirituality continued to be Hebraic, derived from
the Old Testament as amended by the 'new covenant' of Jesus of Nazareth.

While laudable, the attempt in recent times by some Europeans to rediscover

the pagan ethos of their ancestors – exemplified in certain (but not all)
neopagan groups and weltanschauungen – and thus distance themselves from
Hebraic spirituality, is not and never can be, in our view, effective in
reconnecting us to the ethos of the West for two reasons. First, because such
attempts (at least so far) do not exemplify, do not manifest, the spiritual ethos of
the West, founded as that is on the culture and spirituality of ancient Greece
and Rome. Second, because they generally do not take into account how the
ethos of the West has itself been distorted by a Hebraicism that is not only
spiritual but is now, and has been for over a century, cultural.

This cultural Hebraicism is a mode of thinking and action in which Hebrews –

ancient and modern – and their beliefs, and those of their followers and
disciples, are taken as the type, the moral ideal, to be aspired to and lauded. In
the case of ancient Hebrews and their beliefs, the type, the ideal is evident in
the Bible (both Old and New Testaments), and in latter-day interpretations of
the Bible. In the case of modern Hebrews and their disciples, the type, the ideal,
derives from (a) the dogma of 'equality of races' – ultimately derived from
Marxism, sociology, and what has been termed 'social anthropology', with the
belief being that all ethnicities have the same abilities, intelligence, potential,
and human character – and from (b) the religious-like remembrance of and
compulsory teaching regarding the Shoah, together with a hypocritical
championing of ethnic awareness and ancestral traditions for all ethnicities
except native European ('White') peoples, which ethnic awareness of, and its
promotion among, native European peoples is considered 'hatred', 'racist',
'extremist' and is increasing censored and outlawed in the lands of the West
with the Hebraic reasoning being that such ethnic awareness of, and its
promotion among, native European peoples gave rise to colonialism, to fascism
and National Socialism and thus to the Shoah – which must "never be forgotten"
– with no Western country ever allowed to again make ancestral European
beliefs, and the Western ethos, the raison d'être of a nation-State.

In respect of rediscovering the pagan spirituality of the West a fundamental

problem has been a lack of knowledge among those interested in what, exactly,
that spirituality is. A problem exacerbated by pre-existing translations of some
of the ancient works knowledge of which is necessary in order to understand
that spirituality. Works such as the Oedipus Tyrannus and the Antigone by
Sophocles, the Agamemnon by Aeschylus, and the mystical texts of the Corpus
Hermeticism.

Which problem of translation is why, for example, the Antigone of Sophocles has
become to be regarded (by all but a handful of scholars) as some kind of ancient
morality tale or as just a drama about a conflict between two strong and
different characters, Antigone and Creon; why Oedipus Tyrannus is regarded
(by all but a handful of scholars) as a morality tale about "incest", and why the
texts of the Corpus Hermeticism are regarded as imbued with a Christian-like
mysticism and as having been influenced by both the Old and New Testaments.

Yet properly understood in the necessary cultural context, the Antigone, as one
translator noted in the Introduction to his translation,

"deals with the relation between mortals and gods. The work is an
exploration and explanation of the workings of the cosmos, and the
answers given express the distinctive ancient Greek 'outlook' or ethos.
This ethos is pagan, and its essence may be said to be that there are
limits to human behaviour; that some conduct is wise, some conduct is
unwise. Unwise conduct invites retribution by the gods: it can and
often does result in personal misfortune, in bad luck." {1}

Ditto in respect of the Oedipus Tyrannus, and the Agamemnon of Aeschylus.

Regarding the Corpus Hermeticism, as we have previously mentioned, certain
new translations restore

"these texts to the Western pagan tradition and make them relevant to
our times when Western culture and our classical, Greco-Roman, and
pagan heritage is increasingly subsumed in schools and elsewhere by
other, non-Western, cultures and religions, with it now being
politically incorrect to point out that Western culture with its
 Greco-Roman pagan heritage has profoundly changed the world for
the better and is arguably superior to all other cultures past and
present." {2}

That is, translations of important classical texts are now available which, when
studied together, enable us to appreciate and understand the classical, pagan,
ethos and thence the ethos of the West itself. {3}

Which understanding might – probably should – lead us, or someone, to develop

a new, an evolved, pagan weltanschauung which does not involve
anthropomorphic deities but instead is based on a new ontology regarding our
relation, as sentient beings, to Being, to the Cosmos, rather than to 'God' or to
some 'gods'. Something perhaps prefigured in Greek texts such as these with
their reasoned, pragmatic, and often quite warrior-like, spirituality:

The Muse shall tell of the many adventures of that man of the many stratagems
Who, after the pillage of that hallowed citadel at Troy,
Saw the towns of many a people and experienced their ways:
He whose vigour, at sea, was weakened by many afflictions
As he strove to win life for himself and return his comrades to their homes.
But not even he, for all this yearning, could save those comrades
For they were destroyed by their own immature foolishness
Having devoured the cattle of Helios, that son of Hyperion,
Who plucked from them the day of their returning. {4}

°°°°°

You should listen to [the goddess] Fairness and not oblige Hubris
Since Hubris harms unfortunate mortals while even the more fortunate
Are not equal to carrying that heavy a burden, meeting as they do with Mischief.
The best path to take is the opposite one: that of honour
For, in the end, Fairness is above Hubris
Which is something the young come to learn from adversity. {5}

°°°°°

This person, whom I praise, never ceased to believe that the gods
delight in respectful deeds just as much as in consecrated temples,
and, when blessed with success, he was never prideful but rather
gave thanks to the gods. He also made more offerings to them when
he was confident than supplications when he felt hesitant, and, in
appearance, it was his habit to be cheerful when doubtful and
mild-mannered when successful. {6}

°°°°°

Clytaemnestra:

Because of these grievous things, no one should invoke a fatal curse upon
Nor turn their wroth toward, Helen
As if she was some man-killer who alone destroyed
 The lives of those many Danaan men
By having wrought such a festering wound […]

The wife of this corpse presents herself here

As that most ancient fierce Avenger.
It is Atreus, he is of that cruel feast,
Who, in payment for that, has added to his young victims
This adult one […]

But do not suppose that his killing was ignoble

For did he not by his cunning set Misfortune upon this family? {7}

°°°°°

Creon:

So even then you dared to violate these laws?

Antigone:

It was not Zeus who proclaimed them to me,

Nor did she who dwells with the gods below – the goddess, Judgement –
Lay down for us mortals such laws as those.
Neither did I suppose that your edicts
Had so much strength that you, who die,
Could out-run the unwritten and unchanging
Customs of the gods: for the life of these things
Is not only of yesterday or today, but eternal,
No one remembering their birth. {8}

All of which explains why we love to also quote what a certain English poet
wrote in 1873 CE: "the separation between the Greeks and us is due principally
to the Hebraistic culture we receive in childhood." All those tall tales from the
Bible about various Hebrew folk…

Rachael & Richard Stirling

Shropshire
Autumnal Equinox 2017 ev

°°°°°

{1} Antigone. Translated by David Myatt.

{2} Refer to the article An Insight Into Pagan Mysticism, included here.

{3} These translations – dating from between 1991 and 2017, and all of which
are independent of his own mystical – if pagan – 'philosophy of pathei-mathos' –
are by David Myatt, and include the following important classical texts:

° The Agamemnon of Aeschylus. International Standard Book Number:

978-1484128220

° Sophocles – Oedipus Tyrannus. International Standard Book Number:

978-1484132104

° Sophocles – Antigone. International Standard Book Number: 978-1484132067

° Homer – The Odyssey: Books 1, 2 & 3. International Standard Book Number:

978-1495402227

° Corpus Hermeticum: Eight Tractates. A compilation containing translations of

and commentaries on tractates I, III, IV, VI, VIII, XI, XII, XII. International
Standard Book Number: 978-1976452369.

The commentaries on the tractates are of especial interest in elucidating the

paganism of the texts.

His Greek translations are available both as printed books and as gratis open
access (pdf) files here: https://perceiverations.wordpress.com/greek-
translations/

{4} The Odyssey. Translated Myatt.

{5} Hesiod. Translated Myatt, and quoted (with the Greek text) in his
commentary on Tractate III.

{6} Xenophon. Translated Myatt, and quoted (with the Greek text) in his
commentary on Tractate I.

{7} Agamemnon. Translated Myatt.

{8} Antigone. Translated Myatt.

 An Insight Into Pagan Mysticism

In an article, published on his blog on March 2017 and dealing as it does with
the ancient texts of the Corpus Hermeticum {1}, David Myatt expounds on his
decision to translate the ancient Greek term ἀγαθός not by the conventional
English term 'good' but by – according to context – honourable, noble, nobility.
In support of his translation of ἀγαθός he quotes Seneca: "summum bonum est
quod honestum est. Et quod magis admireris: unum bonum est, quod honestum
est, cetera falsa et adulterina bona sunt." {2}

This choice – and his unconventional translations of other particular ancient

Greek words such as νοῦς – really does give, as he notes in his article, an
"impression about ancient Hermeticism which is rather different from that
conveyed by other translations."

The difference, as other commentators on Myatt's Hermetica translations have

noted {3} and as Myatt shows in his article, is between taking those texts as
expressing a Christian ethos and taking them as expressing a pagan – a
classical, Greco-Roman – ethos.

For those interested in Western esotericism in general and Hermeticism in

particular this is a profound and important difference. It restores these texts to
the Western pagan tradition and makes them relevant to our times when
Western culture and our classical, Greco-Roman, and pagan heritage is
increasingly subsumed in schools and elsewhere by other, non-Western, cultures
and religions, with it now being 'politically incorrect' to point out that Western
culture with its Greco-Roman pagan heritage has profoundly changed the world
for the better and is arguably superior to all other cultures past and present.

Although Myatt in his article provides three illuminating examples of the

difference between his 'pagan' (authentic) versions and the 'Christian'
interpolations of other translators, I will provide two other examples.

The first is from tract XI which Myatt entitles From Perceiverance To Hermes.

"Indulging the body and rotten, you are unable to apprehend the
beautiful, the noble. To be completely rotten is to be unaware of the
numinous, while having the ability to discover, to have volition, to
have expectations, is the direct, the better – its own – way to nobility."

Copenhaver, hitherto extolled as providing the 'definitive translation', has:

"While you are evil and a lover of the body, you can understand none
of the things that are beautiful and good. To be ignorant of the divine
is the ultimate vice, but to be able to know, to will and to hope is the
straight and easy way leading to the good." {4}
The second example is from tract IV, which Myatt entitles Chaldron Or Monas.

Since that Being is honourable, the desire was to entrust solely to that
Being such a cosmic order on Earth […] What is apparent can please
us while what is concealed can cause doubt with what is bad often
overt while the honourable is often concealed having as it has neither
pattern nor guise.

Copenhaver translates as:

"Because he is good it was not for himself alone that he wished to

make this offering and adorn this earth […] Visible things delight us
but the invisible causes mistrust. Bad things are more open to sight
but the good is invisible to what can be seen. For the good has neither
shape nor outline."

It is easy to see which translation echoes a pagan ethos – as the likes of Seneca
and Cicero understood classical paganism – and which is redolent of a Christian
or a pseudo-Christian ethos.

In summary, Myatt in his translations of eight of the texts of the Corpus

Hermeticum provides the ordinary reader with an insight into a neglected
Western mystic tradition. A neglected tradition because all the other
translations available impart – in Myatt's words – "the sense of reading
somewhat declamatory sermons about god/God and 'the good' familiar from
over a thousand years of persons preaching about Christianity."

Richard Stirling
Shropshire
2017

{1} https://davidmyatt.wordpress.com/2017/03/24/concerning-ἀγαθός-
and-νοῦς-in-the-corpus-hermeticum/
{2} Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales, LXXI, 4.
{3} Refer to Myatt's Monas - A New Translation of Corpus Hermeticum IV,
included below.  
{4} B. Copenhaver. Hermetica. Cambridge University Press. 1992
 Regarding Myatt's Hermetica

In the Spring of this year (2017) David Myatt released his versions –
translations and commentaries – of several more Corpus Hermeticum texts to
complement his existing, published, versions of tracts I, III, IV, VIII, XI {1}. The
new additions were tracts VI, XII, and the Cantio Arcana part (sections 17 and
18) of tract XIII.

The latest additions – bringing his translations of Hermetica texts to seven –

follow the same methodology as previous versions. That is, his penchant for
transliterating certain Greek words, his use of often unusual English words in
place of the standard translations and meanings given in Greek-English lexicons
such as LSJ {2}, and the terms and expressions he invents or digs up from
usually very old books of English literature. All of which combine to make his
translations idiosyncratic and remarkably different from all previous
translations into English, antique and modern. To his credit, he explains in his
commentary – sometimes in pedantic detail – his choices, citing his reasons and
often providing some quotation in Greek, Latin, or English.

In regard to his translations of hermetic texts, this results in two things. In

translations with a technical vocabulary relating to hermeticism, and in
translations which transports the reader to an ancient world. Both of these
combine to breathe new life into the texts and thence into hermeticism itself.
Thus, far from, as Myatt writes in his introduction to tract VI, giving the
impression "of reading somewhat declamatory sermons about god/God and 'the
good' familiar from over a thousand years of persons preaching about
Christianity," the hermetic texts he has translated give the impression of
reading about a pagan mysticism that most readers will probably be unfamiliar
with.

Thus while other translators write moralistically about god, righteousness,

truth, and 'the good', Myatt previews a world of divinities, of respecting the
customs of the gods, of honesty, and nobility. A good example of the difference is
in Myatt's rendering of part of the Cantio Arcana. Copenhaver – who follows the
proto-Christian interpretation of earlier translators and whose recent
translations of the Corpus Hermeticum are regarded as "the definitive
versions", has:

"Holy knowledge, you enlightened me; through you, hymning the intellectual light, I
take joy in the joy of Mind. Join me, all you powers, and sing me the hymn. You also,
continence, sing me the hymn. My justice, through me hymn the just. My liberality,
through me hymn the Universe. Truth, hymn the truth. Good, hymn the good." (3}

Myatt has:

Numinous knowledge, from you a numinal understanding:

Through you, a song of apprehended phaos,
Delighted with delightful perceiverance.
Join me, all you Arts, in song.
 You, mastery, sing; and you, respectful of custom,
Through me sing of such respect.
Sing, my companions, for All That Exists:
Honesty, through me, sing of being honest,
The noble, sing of nobility.

In Myatt's version there are the two previously mentioned things. A technical
vocabulary – such as numinal, phaos, perceiverance, Arts – requiring
interpretation, and nothing reminiscent of Christianity, such as 'hymn' and 'holy'
and being 'good'. As Myatt writes in his commentary on the Cantio Arcana in
respect of his use of the terms song, honesty and Arts:

   Song. ὕμνος. Not a 'hymn' in the Christian sense (which the word
hymn now so often imputes) but rather celebrating the numinous, and
theos, in song, verse (ode), and chant.

   Honesty. ἀλήθεια. Given that those who are urged to sing are
personifications, this is not some abstract, disputable, 'truth' but as
often elsewhere in classical literature, a revealing, a dis-covering, of
what is real as opposed to what is apparent or outer appearance. In
personal terms, being honest and truthful.

   Arts. As at Poemandres 31 – which is also a traditional doxology

(δοξολογία) to theos – the sense of δυνάμεων [here] is not 'powers',
forces (or something similar and equally at variance with such a
laudation) but 'arts'; that is, particular abilities, qualities, and skills.
Here, these abilities and skills – the craft – relate to esoteric song; to
be able to be an effective laudator in respect of theos and "every
Physis of Kosmos."

His reference to 'every Physis of Kosmos' is to the beginning of the ode:

Let every Physis of Kosmos favourably listen to this song

πᾶσα φύσις κόσμου προσδεχέσθω τοῦ ὕμνου τὴν ἀκοήν

which Copenhaver translates as "let every nature in the cosmos attend to the
hearing of this hymn."

The commentaries which accompany the translations deserve a mention. Each

of them not only occupies far more pages than the actual translation but they
reveal the author as erudite with pages of quotations from ancient Greek and
Latin works – for most of which Myatt provides his own translation – and the
occasional quotation from English literature. In the case of English literature
usually to explain the meaning of the unusual English words of phrases he uses,
quoting the likes of Chaucer, Coleridge, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Chapman,
and others.

       In effect what Myatt does in his translations is paint of picture of classical –
and of Hellenic – culture and especially of Hellenic mysticism; a culture and a
mysticism which is pagan and based on individuals, on tangible things such as
honesty, and not on moralistic and religious and impersonal abstractions. That
is, he reveals the Greco-Roman ethos – the pagan ethos – underlying the
hermetic texts and which is in contrast to that of Christianity with its later,
medieval and Puritanical, impersonal moralizing. He incidently leaves us with
an interesting question. Which is whether such pagan Hellenic mysticism
influenced Christianity in a positive way. In academia the assumption has
always been that Christianity and earlier Judaic monotheism influenced
hermeticism despite the fact of evidence from papyrus fragments indicating the
opposite and despite the fact that the earliest texts of the Old Testament were
written in Greek and not in Hebrew. {4}

Myatt himself is of the opinion that parts of ancient Greek mysticism and
cosmogony – as described for instance in tract III of the Corpus Hermeticum –
have influenced both Judaism and Christianity. {5}

Such controversial matters aside, his translations of tracts from the Corpus
Hermeticism are decidedly iconoclastic and – when compared to those of other
translators such as Copenhaver – idiosyncratic and as such are not and probably
never will be mainstream at least in academia. They may therefore never gain
widespread acceptance among established academics. Does that matter?
Probably not because his actual and potential audience is much greater. Which
audience is of those interested in Western mysticism, in Western paganism, and
in Greco-Roman culture in general, and for such interested parties Myatt has
done a great service since he places the hermetic texts firmly into those milieux.

One other thing about the translations and commentaries deserves a mention.
As well a being available in printed form he has not only made all of them
available as free downloads from the internet {6} but also issued them under a
liberal Creative Commons license which allows others to freely copy and
distribute them.

Rachael Stirling
Shropshire
May 2017

{1} D. Myatt. Corpus Hermeticum I, III, IV, VIII, XI. 2017. International Standard Book Number
978-1545020142.
{2} H. G. Liddell, R. Scott, H. S. Jones. A Greek-English Lexicon. Oxford University Press, 1996.
{3} B. Copenhaver. Hermetica. Cambridge University Press. 1992.
{4} The earliest written texts of the Old Testament – papyrus fragments found in Egypt – are in
Hellenistic Greek and date from around 250 BCE and precede by over a century the earliest
fragments written in Hebrew (some of the Dead Sea Scrolls) which date from 150 BCE to
around 50 BCE.
{5} See Myatt's introduction to his translation of tract III.
{6} https://davidmyatt.wordpress.com/corpus-hermeticum/
 The Divine Pymander

In July of this year (2013) David Myatt issued the first pre-publication draft of
his complete translation of and commentary on the Pymander section of the
Corpus Hermeticum – 'The Divine Pymander' {1}. The work, translated from
the ancient Greek, is also available as a book – International Standard Book
Number 978-1495470684.

The Divine Pymander is one of the standard Hermetic and Gnostic texts,
outlining as it does Hermetic philosophy, and, in Mead's 1906 translation, has
been used by the Theosophical Society and occult groups such as The Hermetic
Order of The Golden Dawn, who weaved part of it into an occult ritual. The text
was also used, again in translation, by the British occultist Aleister Crowley, as
part of a conjuration involving 'the holy guardian angel'.

Myatt's translation differs in almost every respect from the other translations
available, the most scholarly of which is probably that of Copenhaver published
in 1992 {2}. One of the obvious differences is Myatt's use, in his translation, of
particular transliterations, especially his use of 'theos' instead of 'god', logos
instead of 'Word', and 'physis' instead of 'nature', the later of which is an
important principle in Myatt's own and somewhat gnostic philosophy of pathei-
mathos. Another difference is his translation of certain Greek terms,
translations which he himself in his Introduction describes as idiosyncratic,
although I would go so far as to say they are iconoclastic. For instance, he
translates 'agios' not as the conventional 'holy' but as 'numinous', explaining his
reasons in a long note in his commentary, writing that,

"Correctly understood, numinous is the unity beyond our perception

of its two apparent aspects; aspects expressed by the Greek usage of
ἅγιος which could be understood in a good (light) way as 'sacred',
revered, of astonishing beauty; and in a bad (dark) way as redolent of
the gods/wyrd/the fates/morai in these sense of the retributive or
(more often) their balancing power/powers and thus giving rise to
mortal 'awe' since such a restoration of the natural balance often
involved or required the death (and sometimes the 'sacrifice') of
mortals. It is the numinous – in its apparent duality, and as a
manifestation of a restoration of the natural, divine, balance – which is
evident in much of Greek tragedy, from the Agamemnon of Aeschylus
(and the Orestia in general) to the Antigone and the Oedipus Tyrannus
of Sophocles." David Myatt – Mercvrii Trismegisti Pymander de
potestate et sapientia dei: A Translation and Commentary (2013)

Other differences include Myatt's use of obscure English words, such as

artisements – all of which he explains in his commentary – and his coining of
unusual and striking terms to translate an important Greek expression, such as
'quidditas of semblance' for what is usually translated (both by Mead and
Copenhaver) as 'archetype of form', with Myatt writing in his commentary that,

"The transliteration 'archetype' here is, unfortunately, unsuitable,

given what the term archetype now suggests and implies (vide
Jungian psychology, for example) beyond what the Greek of the text
means. Appropriate words or terms such as 'primal-pattern' or
'protoform' are awkward, clumsy. Hence quidditas (11th/12th century
Latin), from whence came 'quiddity', a term originally from medieval
scholasticism which was then used to mean the natural (primal)
nature or form of some-thing, and thus hints at the original sense of
ἀρχέτυπον."

A Greek Not Christian Text

All these differences give a decidedly different tone to the work. So much so
that Myatt's translation comes across as a decidedly Greek, almost pagan, work
about metaphysics in contrast to the other available translations which make it
appear to be if not some sort of early Christian text then a text heavily
influenced by and expressing Christian ideas. Part of this is down to what many
will undoubtedly see as Myatt's controversial choice of English words, a choice
which he often explains in his commentary as avoiding imposing "after nearly
two thousand years of scriptural exegesis and preaching, various religious
preconceptions on the text".

Two sets of quotations from four different translations should illustrate this. The
first set is from the very end of the text.

The 17th century Everard translation:

Holy is God the Father of All Things.

Holy is God Whose Will is Performed and Accomplished by His Own
Powers.
Holy is God, that Determineth to be Known, and is Known of His Own,
or Those that are His.
Holy art Thou, that by Thy Word hast established all Things.

The 1906 Mead translation:

Holy are you, O God, the universals' Father.

Holy are you, O God, whose Will perfects itself by means of its own
Powers.
Holy are you, O God, who willeth to be known and art known by your
own.
Holy are you,who did you by Word make to consist the things that are.

The 1992 Copenhaver translation:

Holy is god, the father of all.

 Holy is god, whose counsel is done by his own powers.
Holy is god, whom wishes to be known and is known by his own
people.
Holy are you, who by the word have constituted all things that are.

The 2013 Myatt translation:

Agios o Theos, father of all beings.

Agios o Theos, whose purpose is accomplished by his own arts.
Agios o Theos, whose disposition is to be recognized and who is
recognized by his own.
Agios es, you who by logos form all being.

It should be explained that Myatt in his commentary writes,

"I have given, as an intimation, a transliteration of the first part, as

these are doxologies, similar to the Kyrie eleison [Κύριε ἐλέησον], and
much (if not all) of their numinous/sacred/mystical/esoteric quality
and meaning are lost when they are translated into plain – or into
archaic, KJV type – English. Although they are best read/recited in the
original Greek, the Latin preserves much of the numinosity of these
and other such doxologies [….] ἅγιος ὁ approximates to 'Numinous is'
[theos]."

Myatt then proceeds to give the Latin translation of the Greek.

The second set of quotations are from the middle of the text.

The 17th century Everard translation:

"Hear now the rest of that speech, thou so much desirest to hear.
When that Period was fulfilled, the bond of all things was loosed and
untied by the Will of God; for all living Creatures being
Hermaphroditical, or Male and Female, were loosed and untied
together with Man; and so the Males were apart by themselves and
the Females likewise. And straightway God said to the Holy Word,.
Increase in Increasing, and Multiply in Multitude all you my Creatures
and Workmanships. And let Him that is endued with Mind, know
Himself to be Immortal; and that the cause of Death is the Love of the
Body"

The 1906 Mead translation:

"Now listen to the rest of the discourse which you dost long to hear.
The period being ended, the bond that bound them all was loosened
by God's Will. For all the animals being male-female, at the same time
with Man were loosed apart; some became partly male, some in like
fashion [partly] female. And straightway God spake by His Holy Word:
 Increase ye in increasing, and multiply in multitude, ye creatures and
creations all; and man that hath Mind in him, let him learn to know
that he himself is deathless, and that the cause of death is love."

The 1992 Copenhaver translation:

"Hear the rest, the word you yearn to hear. When the cycle was
completed, the bond among all things was sundered by the counsel of
god. All livings things, which had been androgyne, were sundered into
two parts – humans along with them – and part of them became male,
part likewise female. But god immediately spoke a holy speech:
'Increase in increasing and multiply in multitude, all you creatures
and craftworks, and let him (who) is mindful recognize that he is
immortal, that desire is the cause of death."

The 2013 Myatt translation:

"Now listen to the rest of the explanation you asked to hear. When the
cycle was fulfilled, the connexions between all things were, by the
deliberations of theos, unfastened. Living beings – all male-and-female
then – were, including humans, rent asunder thus bringing into being
portions that were masculous with the others muliebral. Directly,
then, theos spoke a numinous logos: propagate by propagation and
spawn by spawning, all you creations and artisements, and let the
perceiver have the knowledge of being deathless and of Eros as
responsible for death."

The Septenary System

While Myatt's commentary is often dense and sometimes obscure, it is notable

for two reasons.

First, its scholarly nature, for his quotations, in the commentary and in Greek or
Latin and with his own translations, range from the Homeric Hymn to Demeter,
to Sophocles, to Xenophon, to Cicero and the New Testament, and include what
to most people will be obscure works from the 'fathers of the Christian church',
including Maximus the Confessor, Irenaeus, and Cyril of Alexandria. Occasional
gems are to be found, such as Myatt's translation from the Greek of a passage
from the Discourses of Epictetus:

"Neither a tyrannos nor some Lord shall negate my intent; nor some
crowd although I be just one; nor someone stronger although I be
weaker, since such unhindrance is a gift, to everyone, from theos."

Second, and of interest to many, the commentary explains much about not only
'the septenary system' – the hebdomad – which forms an important part of the
hermetic Pymander text, but also about the 'anados', the journey through the
spheres to the final goal of immortality. There are esoteric gems aplenty here,
and it is worth ploughing through the commentary just to find these. For
example, in a comment on part 26 of the Pymander text, Myatt writes,

" [It is] easy to understand why some considered there were, or
represented their understanding/insight by, 'nine' (seven plus two)
fundamental cosmic emanations, or by nine realms or spheres [qv. the
quote from Cicero in section 17] – the seven of the hebdomad, plus
the one of the 'ogdoadic physis' mentioned here, plus the one (also
mentioned here) of what is beyond even this 'ogdoadic physis'.
However, as this text describes, there are seven realms or spheres – a
seven-fold path to immortality, accessible to living mortals – and then
two types of existence (not spheres) beyond these, accessible only
after the mortals has journeyed along that path and then, having
'offered up' certain things along the way (their mortal ethos), 'handed
over their body to its death'. Ontologically, therefore, the seven might
somewhat simplistically be described as partaking of what is 'causal'
(of what is mortal) and the two types of existence beyond the seven as
partaking of – as being – 'acausal' (of what is immortal). Thus,
Pœmandres goes on to say, the former mortal – now immortal – moves
on (from this first type of 'acausal existence') to become these forces
(beyond the ogdoadic physis) to thus finally 'unite with theos': αὐτοὶ
εἰς δυνάμεις ἑαυ τοὺς παραδιδόασι καὶ δυνάμεις γενόμενοι ἐν θεῷ
γίνονται."

An Iconoclastic Work

Although already known as "a British iconoclast" {3} for his strange and past
involvements and peregrinations, as well as known for his idiosyncratic
translations of Sappho and Heraclitus, David Myatt's translation of and
commentary on 'The Divine Pymander' will undoubtedly confirm that
iconoclasm and that idiosyncrasy.

His translation is most decidedly iconoclastic, bringing as it does a new insight

into the text, and breathing as it does new life into its hermeticism, thus making
it far more accessible to, and understandable, by students of gnosticism,
hermeticism, and the occult; and although – given Myatt's (not always deserved)
reputation, and his past involvements and peregrinations – it will undoubtedly
be ignored by the academic establishment, its appeal will be to such students
and to others interested in the arcane. It also serves to compliment Myatt's own
philosophy of pathei-mathos, elucidating as it does some of the more obscure
points of Myatt's ontological speculations.

R. Parker
July 2013

{1} Myatt's translation and commentary is included his book Corpus

Hermeticum: Eight Tractates. International Standard Book Number
978-1976452369.

{2} Copenhaver, B. Hermetica. Cambridge University Press, 1992. There is a

major issue with Copenhaver's book in that in his notes he gives not the actual
Greek text (using the Greek character set) but transliterations (using the Latin
character set) which is annoying for those who can read Greek. Myatt in his
notes and commentary, and to his credit, eschews this 'populist', dumbing-down,
approach, and – in accord with hundreds of years of scholarship – provides the
Greek text.

{3} Jon B. Perdue: The War of All the People: The Nexus of Latin American
Radicalism and Middle Eastern Terrorism. Potomac Books, 2012. p.70
 Myatt's Monas
A New Translation of Corpus Hermeticum IV

David Myatt's translation of and commentary on the fourth tract of the Corpus
Hermeticum {1} continues the style of his two previous translations of Hermetic
texts: transliterations of some Greek words (such as logos and theos) and not
giving some other Greek words (such as κακός and μῖσος) there usual meanings
such as are found, for instance, in the standard Greek-English Lexicon of
Liddell, Scott, and Jones {2}. As with his other Hermetic translations this results
in Myatt's version reading like an ancient pagan text rather than one infused
with Christian or ascetic ideas, as the following examples illustrate.

The 1906 Mead translation:

Unless thou first shalt hate thy Body, son, thou canst not love thy Self.
But if thou lovest thy Self thou shalt have Mind, and having Mind thou
shalt share in the Gnosis.

The 1992 Copenhaver translation, which is quite similar to Mead's:

Unless you first hate your body, my child, you cannot love yourself, but
when you have loved yourself, you will possess mind, and if you have
mind, you will also have a share in the way to learn.

The 2016 Myatt translation:

My son, primarily, unless you have a prejudice about the body

You cannot have affection for yourself, and when you have affection for yourself
You can acquire perceiverance and, having perceiverance,
You can participate in episteme.

Regarding episteme, Myatt writes in his commentary:

A transliteration of ἐπιστήμη, which could be – and has been –

accented thus: épistémé. The meaning is 'a way', or a means or a
method, by which something can be known, understood, and
appreciated. In this case, perceiveration, which the artisan-creator
has positioned "half-way between psyches, as a reward." Episteme,
therefore, should be considered a technical, esoteric, term associated
with some of the weltanschauungen that are described in the Corpus
Hermeticum. Thus, in the Poemandres tractate, the anados through
the seven spheres is an episteme.
A Contentious Choice

One of the most contentious aspects of Myatt approach is his view, described in
his Introduction, of the relation of the text to ancient Egyptian beliefs; of the
texts being in essence representative of the Greek world-view with only few
passing Egyptian references such as using the name Thoth.

While this is also the view of the Dominican priest André-Jean Festugière – the
Greek scholar who with Professor Arthur Nock edited the standard edition of
the text used by Myatt and others – many modern scholars have veered toward
the view of there being some Egyptian, and probably Christian, influence.

The other contentious aspect is how Myatt, in this tractate, defines ἀγαθός. As
'honourable' instead of the more usual 'good'. In defence of his choice he quotes
a passage, in Greek, from the Corpus Aristotelicum and provides his own
translation, arguing that this expresses the pagan Greek view and is apposite
given what the English term good often implies due to the legacy of Christianity.

Myatt's choice here completely changes the tone of the whole work, as evident
in the following passage:

The 1906 Mead translation:

But they who have received some portion of God's gift, these, Tat, if we judge by
their deeds, have from Death's bonds won their release; for they embrace in their
own Mind all things, things on the earth, things in the heaven, and things above the
heaven,—if there be aught. And having raised themselves so far they sight the Good;
and having sighted It, they look upon their sojourn here as a mischance; and in
disdain of all, both things in body and the bodiless, they speed their way unto that
One and Only One.

The 1992 Copenhaver translation:

But those who participate in the gift that comes from god, O Tat, are immortal
rather than mortal if one compares their deeds, for in a mind of their own they have
comprehended all things on earth, things in heaven and even what lies beyond
heaven. Having raised themselves so far, they have seen the good and, having seen
it, they have come to regard the wasting of time here below as a calamity. They have
scorned every corporeal and incorporeal thing, and they hasten toward the one and
only.

The 2016 Myatt translation:

And yet, Thoth, those who parten to that gift from theos become,
When set against their deeds, immortal instead of mortal
For they with their perceiverance apprehend the Earthly, the Heavenly,
And what is beyond the Heavens.
Having gone so far, they perceive what is honourable, and, having so perceived,
They regard what preceded this as a delay, as a problem
And, with little regard for whatever is embodied and disembodied,
They strive toward the Monas.
Also notable here is Myatt's choice of Thoth for Τάτ, and Monas for μονάς.
Certainly the choice of Tat by both Mead and Copenhaver is unfortunate given
what 'tat' means in British English.

Conclusion

Once again Myatt has provided a refreshingly different translation of an

important Hermetic text, and one which as with his previous translations of
tracts I and III {3} both reads well and offers a different, if iconoclastic and
controversial, interpretation most suitable to students of Hermeticism and –
perhaps especially – to students of the Occult given how such hermetic texts
formed and form one of the foundations of Western Occultism, both during the
Renaissance and in our modern times.

R. Parker
July 2016

{1} Included in Myatt's Corpus Hermeticum: Eight Tractates. International

Standard Book Number 978-1976452369

{2} Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1996. International Standard Book Number

9780198642268.

{3} His previous Hermetica translations included the Poemandres and the Ιερός
Λόγος tracts.
 On Native Egyptian Influence In The Corpus Hermeticum

For over a hundred years, from Reitzenstein's Poimandres published in 1904, to

Fowden's The Egyptian Hermes published in 1986, the question of Egyptian
influence on the fourteen Greek texts – tractates {1} – collectively known as the
Corpus Hermeticum has been much debated. The opinions of scholars, and of
translators, have ranged from little influence (Festugiere) to insignificant
influence (Myatt), to much influence (Mahé), to the more recent one (Fowden)
of hermeticism being syncretic, combining elements of Hellenic culture with
elements of Egyptian culture in various and still disputable proportions.

What, however, is often not explicitly defined is what 'Egyptian', and Egyptian
culture, mean in the context of where and when the Greek texts of the Corpus
Hermeticum were written; which was, to give the widest parameters, sometime
between the end of the first century CE and the end of the third century CE
when Egypt was a province of the Roman Empire and where cities like
Alexandria were places where Hellenic culture thrived and where people of
Greek and of Roman descent lived in large numbers, some of whom no doubt
had an interest in and knowledge of native Egyptian – 'Pharaonic' – culture and
history. For centuries before that, most of Egypt had – following the conquests
of Alexander the Great – been a Greek colony ruled by a succession of people of
Greek origin such as the Macedonian Ptolemaios Soter who established what
became known as the Ptolemaic dynasty (or Kingdom) whose last ruler was
Cleopatra, herself of Greek origin, who desired that the native Egyptians of her
time consider her as an embodiment of their native goddess Isis.

Thus for some three centuries before the texts of the Corpus Hermeticum were
written Egypt was a thriving outpost of Greek culture; a place where the likes of
Aristotle and Archimedes lived and flourished for many years.

It is therefore necessary to make a distinction between the ruling, Greek, elite –

and the Greek aristocracy of people such as Aristotle and Archimedes – and
native Egyptians; a cultural and an ancestral distinction. A relevant comparison
is the British Raj in India who were British by heritage and culture and who,
even if they were born and spent most of their life in India, could not – should
not – be described as 'Indian'.

Considered thus the relevant context of the Greek texts of the Corpus
Hermeticum was the centuries-long Greek culture of such an aristocracy
combined with the relatively recent culture of Rome from the time of Caesar to
praefectus Statilius Aemilianus (270 CE). What is not particularly relevant is the
culture of the natives, the ancestors of the fellaheen, some or many of whom no
doubt continued to revere or at least remember the divinities of ancient Egypt
such as the goddess Isis and most of whom would not have been able to read let
alone write Greek.

Given the centuries-long Greek and Roman heritage of the ruling elite and the
aristocracy – who could speak and read Greek and who were probably
acquainted with the writings of Plato and Aristotle – and given why rulers such
as Cleopatra desired, for the benefit of her subjects, to be identified with an
ancient Egyptian divinity such as Isis, it is most probable that the authors of the
Greek texts of the Corpus Hermeticum, resident as they were in the then
Roman province of Egypt, sought to give their metaphysical speculations some
local, Egyptian, colour by – among other things – naming the son (or the pupil)
of the Greek Hermes after the Egyptian god Thoth.

As Myatt noted in the introduction to his translation of tractate IV of the Corpus

Hermeticum:

"In respect of Τάτ, while there is no disputing that Thoth is meant,

what may or may not be implied by the name Thoth is whether or not
there is a primarily Egyptian genesis for the metaphysics and the
cosmogony of this particular tractate. For what does 'Egyptian' mean
in the context of the Corpus Hermeticum, written when Egypt was a
post-Ptolemaic Roman province where Hellenism still thrived? That is,
is the text propounding a metaphysics and a cosmogony primarily
redolent of indigenous, pre-Alexandrian, times, with Hermes
Trismegistus simply a Hellenic name for the ancient Dynastic deity
Thoth, and thus with the Greek Hermes possibly being a son of that
ancient Egyptian deity? Or is the text redolent of a classical
metaphysics and a cosmogony; or of a Hellenic metaphysics and
cosmogony; or of some syncretism of Egyptian (pre-Alexandrian)
weltanschauungen with Hellenic mysticism? Or has the author (or
authors) of Ἑρμοῦ πρὸς Τάτ ὁ κρατῆρ ἡ μονάς simply used the name of
an ancient deity – Thoth – in order to appeal to an audience of
Hellenized Egyptians, or Greeks/Romans dwelling in Egypt, or
because it seemed to add some esoteric gravitas to the text? Or, as the
title might be taken to imply – of Hermes to Thoth – is it a text
intended to inform Egyptians (Hellenized or expatriate
Greeks/Romans, or otherwise) about Greek/Hellenic metaphysics and
cosmogony, with Thoth thus regarded, symbolically, esoterically, or
otherwise, as the son of the Greek divinity Hermes?

In this matter, I incline toward the view – based on some forty years of
study of the Corpus Hermeticum and similar mystical and esoteric
 texts, classical, Hellenic, medieval, Arabic and otherwise – that what
is imparted in this tractate, as with the Poemandres and Ιερός Λόγος,
is primarily a mystical, and – for centuries – aural, Greek tradition,
albeit one possibly influenced, over time and in some degree, by the
metaphysical speculations of later philosophers such as Plato and
Aristotle."

I therefore find myself in agreement with Myatt regarding the question of native
Egyptian influence on those texts. That the texts present us with a
Greek/Hellenic metaphysics and cosmogony, not with some Greek and Egyptian
syncretion, and certainly not with a native Egyptian metaphysics and
cosmogony slightly influenced by Hellenism.

For it is essentially a question of terminology: of what 'Egyptian' means in

cultural and in ancestral terms. Of a perhaps an inhibition on the part of some
modern scholars to differentiate between the ancestry and the culture of 'the
natives' and the ancestry and culture of a ruling elite and aristocracy.

R. Parker
2017

{1} Tractate is derived from the classical Latin tractatus meaning a discussion,
'concerning', a treatise; and was used by writers such as Cicero and Pliny. It
was later assimilated into ecclesiastical Latin – qv. Augustine – where it denoted
a homily or sermon. It is the basis of the modern English word tract.

°°°°°

List of works cited

A-J. Festugiere. La Révélation d'Hermès Trismégiste. 4 volumes. Les Belles

Lettres, Paris, 1946-1954.

G. Fowden. The Egyptian Hermes. Princeton University Press, 1993

J-P. Mahé. Hermes En Haute Egypte. Tome I, 1978. Tome II, 1982. Presses de
l'Université Laval.

D. Myatt. Corpus Hermeticum: Eight Tractates. CreateSpace. 2017.

R. A. Reitzenstein. Poimandres: Studien zur griechisch-ägyptischen und

frühchristlichen Literatu. Teubner, Leipzig, 1904

R. A. Reitzenstein & H. H. Schaeder. Studien zum antiken Synkretismus aus

Iran und Griechenland. (Studien der Bibliothek Warburg), Teubner, Leipzig,
1926.
 Suffering, Honour, And The Culture Of The West

A theme of David Myatt's post-2011 writings – and of his philosophy of pathei-

mathos {1} – is the question of human-caused suffering leading him to ask
whether we humans have changed significantly, en masse, such that such
suffering is less now than in the past three to four thousand years. Which
question led him to write

"if we do not or cannot learn from our human culture of pathei-

mathos, from the many thousands of years of such suffering as that
culture documents and presents and remembers; if we no longer
concern ourselves with de studiis humanitatis ac litterarum, then do
we as a sentient species deserve to survive?" {2}

A century after the mechanized slaughter of the First World War which killed
millions of people and injured millions more, and seventy-three years after the
slaughter and suffering of millions more people in the Second World War,
human-caused suffering continues around the world. War and armed conflict
and destruction in the Middle East and Africa and elsewhere. Terrorist attacks
in Europe, America, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, and elsewhere. Meanwhile
humans, individually and in small groups, continue to kill, rape, and be brutal
and violent and oppressive toward and injure and cause suffering to other
human beings in hundreds of thousands of attacks every year all around the
world.

As Myatt wrote in respect of the suffering caused by war and armed conflict,

"it is as if we, as a sentient species, have learnt nothing from the past
four thousand years. Nothing from the accumulated pathei-mathos of
those who did such deeds or who experienced such deeds or who
suffered because of such deeds. Learnt nothing from four thousand
years of the human culture that such pathei-mathos created and
which to us is manifest – remembered, celebrated, transcribed – in
Art, literature, memoirs, music, poetry, myths, legends, and often in
the ethos of a numinous ancestral awareness or in those sometimes
mystical allegories that formed the basis for a spiritual way of life.

All we have done is to either (i) change the names of that which or
those whom we are loyal to and for which or for whom we fight, kill,
and are prepared to die for, or (ii) given names to such new causes as
we have invented in order to give us some identity or some excuse to
fight, endure, triumph, preen, or die for. Pharaoh, Caesar, Pope,
Defender of the Faith, President, General, Prime Minister; Rome,
Motherland, Fatherland, The British Empire, Our Great Nation, North,
South, our democratic way of life. It makes little difference; the same
 loyalty; the same swaggering; the same hubris; the same desire, or
the same obligation or coercion, to participate and fight." {3}

While in regard to humans killing, injuring, being violent toward and preying on
other humans he asked,

"Must we therefore be resigned to suffering, to misery, to injustices,

to the iniquity, to the continuing iniquity, of selfish, hubriatic,
individuals who bully, rape, scheme, subjugate, manipulate, injure,
maim, and kill? Reassured by judicium divinum or – perhaps – hoping,
trusting, in the pending justice of some judge, some government, or
some State?" {4}

Myatt writes that his

"fallible answer to the question of how to deal with the suffering that
blights this world [is] the answer of a personal honour. That is, for
each of us to gently try to carry that necessary harmony, that balance,
of δίκη, wordlessly within; to thus restrain ourselves from causing
harm while being able, prepared, in the immediacy of the moment, to
personally, physically, restrain – prevent – others when we chance
upon such harm being done. This, to me, is Life in its wholesome
natural fullness – as lived, presenced, by the brief, mortal, consciously
aware, emanations we are; mortal emanations capable of restraint,
reason, culture, and reforming change; of learning from our pathei-
mathos and that of others." {4}

His "fallible answer" may seem to many to be somewhat idealistic given the
reality that those (to use a Myattian term) with a bad or rotten physis are not
going to suddenly change their personality or are congenitally incapable of
learning from 'the culture of pathei-mathos'. But understood in the context of
his philosophy the answer is logical given Myatt's analysis of what the actual
problem is or might be. An analysis which reveals that his philosophy is far from
idealistic and in truth is rather radical, for in respect of the causes of suffering
he writes in one memorable essay that

"It is almost as if we – somehow flawed – need something beyond our

personal lives to vivify us; to excite us; to test ourselves; to identify
with. As if we cannot escape the barbarian who lies in wait, within;
ready to subsume us once again so that we sally forth on behalf of
some cause, some leader, or some ideal, or some abstraction, or as
part of some crusade. As if we human beings, as Sophocles intimated
over two thousand years ago, are indeed, by nature, and have
remained sometimes honourable and sometimes dishonourable
beings, able to sometimes be rational, thinking, beings, but also
unable to escape our desire, our need, our propensity, to not only be
barbaric but to try to justify to ourselves and to others our need for,
and even our enjoyment of, such barbarity.
 Or perhaps the stark truth is that it is we men who are flawed or
incomplete and who thus need to change. As if we, we men, have not
yet evolved enough to be able to temper, to balance, our harsh
masculous nature with the muliebral; a balance which would see us
become almost a new species; one which has, having finally sloughed
off the suffering-causing hubriatic patriarchal attitudes of the past,
learnt from the pathei-mathos of our ancestors, from the pathei-
mathos of our human culture, born and grown and nurtured as our
human culture was, has been, and is by over four thousand years of
human-caused suffering. A learning from and of the muliebral, for the
wyrdful thread which runs through, which binds, our human pathei-
mathos is a muliebral one: the thread of kindness, of gentleness, of
love, of compassion; of empathy; of the personal over and above the
supra-personal." {5}

In a later essay he is even more forthright, stating that

"it is men – unbalanced in physis – who have caused and are

responsible for wars, invasions, and the deaths and destruction and
suffering that results, just as most violent crime and murders are
caused by men. And it is they, of course, who have – also for millennia
– dominated and manipulated women (or tried to), who have raped
women, who have physically abused them, and killed so many of them,
and all because some men cannot control themselves lacking as they
do the virtue of honour." {6}

In regard to how he arrived at this conclusion he derived it as he derived most

of his philosophy from his own pathei-mathos, from his own practical
experiences extending over some four decades.

"As I know from my outré experience of life – especially my forty years

of extremism, hubris, and selfishness; my terms of imprisonment, my
experience with gangs, with people of bad intentions and with those
of good intentions – it really is as if we terran men have, en masse,
learnt nothing from the past four or five thousand years." {7}

He is therefore not being idealistic or academic in an 'ivory tower' sort of way

or basing his argument on statistics or on theories or ideologies propounded by
others. He is instead writing from life having analysed his outré, his exeatic, his
diverse experiences using 'the human culture of pathei-mathos' as a guide and
it is therefore on that basis that his conclusions should be understood, judged
and appreciated.

It is on that basis that in 2012 he wrote that

"the uncomfortable truth is that we, we men, are and have been the
ones causing, needing, participating in, those wars and conflicts. We –
not women – are the cause of most of the suffering, death,
 destruction, hate, violence, brutality, and killing, that has occurred
and which is still occurring, thousand year upon thousand year; just
as we are the ones who seek to be – or who often need to be – prideful
and 'in control'; and the ones who through greed or alleged need or
because of some ideation have saught to exploit not only other human
beings but the Earth itself. We are also masters of deception; of the
lie. Cunning with our excuses, cunning in persuasion, and skilled at
inciting hatred and violence. And yet we men have also shown
ourselves to be, over thousands of years, valourous; capable of noble,
selfless, deeds. Capable of doing what is fair and restraining ourselves
from doing what is unethical. Capable of a great and a gentle love.

This paradoxy continues to perplex me. And I have no answers as to

how we might change, reform, this paradoxical φύσις of ours, and so –
perhaps – balance the suffering-causing masculous with the empathic
muliebral and yet somehow in some way retain that which is the
genesis of the valourous." {7}

It is clear from his later writings that from 2012 on he pondered upon that
paradoxy and arrived at a tentative and, in his words, a fallible answer. Which
pondering he describes in some detail in his lengthy five part essay, published in
2013, titled Questions of Good, Evil, Honour, and God, and in which essay he
gave voice to his doubts about the current solutions to the problem of
personally-caused suffering – such as believing in judicium divinum (divine
justice) or "trusting in the pending justice of some judge, some government, or
some State." In a poignant passage he asked in respect of those personally
causing suffering whether it was wrong for him

"to still feel the need for someone, some many, somewhere, to
somehow in some way forestall, prevent, such deeds by such persons
as may unjustly harm some others so that there is no waiting for the
divine justice of a deity; no waiting for some Court somewhere to –
possibly, and sometimes – requite a grievous wrong. No waiting for
that promised idealistic idyllic future society when we humans –
having somehow (perhaps miraculously) been changed in nature en
masse – have ceased to so grievously, harmfully, selfishly, inflict
ourselves on others." {4}

He then presented his fallible answer, which was that

"of a personal honour. That is, for each of us to gently try to carry that
necessary harmony, that balance, of δίκη, wordlessly within; to thus
restrain ourselves from causing harm while being able, prepared, in
the immediacy of the moment, to personally, physically, restrain –
prevent – others when we chance upon such harm being done." {4}

Myatt thus championed not only personal self-defence and "valorous defence of
another in a personal situation" but also "if our personal judgement of the
circumstances deem it necessary, lethal force." {8}

In respect of the question of suffering he therefore advocated something both

quite practical, and quite radical at least the lands of the developed nations of
the West.

The Practicalities of Personal Honour

As befits his decades of personal experience of the practicalities of life – thirty

years as a violent political activist and propagandist, ten years as a Muslim
activist, several years leading a criminal gang, among other experiences – Myatt
was aware of how the governments of the nations of the West disapproved of
individuals using their own judgement in regard to employing lethal force with
many outlawing the carrying weapons enabling effective self-defence and the
"valorous defence of another in a personal situation."

In reply to a question asked of him in 2015 he wrote

"how – or even can – societies in the West and around the world
promote the virtue of empathy and personal honour, and if they could,
would they want to given how most such societies (especially those in
the West) are based on law and justice being the prerogative of the
State? In respect of empathy at least, there is – as I suggested – the
solution of Studia Humanitatis; that is, the solution of educating
citizens in what I have termed the culture of pathei- mathos.

But since personal honour means that individuals should have the
right to bear and carry weapons, and be lawfully able – in the
immediacy of the personal moment – to use such weapons in
self-defence and in valorous defence of others dishonourably attacked,
it is most unlikely the governments or politicians of modern Western
societies would even consider such an honourable solution to the
problem of suffering. Indeed, they seem to be moving toward even
more restrictions on individuals bearing and carrying weapons;
moving toward severely punishing those who use weapons in
self-defence or even in valorous defence of others dishonourably
attacked.

That is, that there is in many Western societies a desire, by

governments and politicians, for more control over their citizens, for
more interventions, at home and abroad, in the name of 'security', and
for the use of force to be lawfully restricted to those – such as the
Police or the armed forces – who are appointed and who serve on the
basis of a chain of command which stops with some government
representative or some politician or some military leader responsible
to one of the foregoing.

Thus, while I personally strive to uphold what honour demands in the

 immediacy of the moment, most people – even if they agreed with the
principle – would be wary of doing so, given current laws in a country
such as Britain. Or, more probably, they would consider it an
unnecessary and possibly a retrograde thing to do." {9}

Although in the same reply he admits that his "own preoccupation in respect of
personal honour may be somewhat misplaced" it is clear that regardless of such
and other diplomatic language he personally supports the right of individuals to
carry weapons for use in self-defence and in defence of others dishonourably
attacked even though many Western governments have, fairly recently (in the
last one hundred years), deemed the carrying of such weapons to be illegal
despite the fact that the carrying of such weapons for such purposes was for
thousands of years an acceptable cultural and ancestral custom among the
peoples of the West.

Which perhaps – and yet again – places Myatt on the side of our ancestral
Western culture. An ancestral culture whose metaphysics and ethos he has not
only described in recent (2017) works of his such as Classical Paganism And
The Christian Ethos and Tu Es Diaboli Ianua but also and importantly evolved,
beyond mythoi and thus beyond named gods and goddesses.

A Western culture exemplified, according to Myatt, by καλὸς κἀγαθός. That is,

by those who "conduct themselves in a gentlemanly or lady-like manner and
who thus manifest – because of their innate physis or through pathei-mathos or
through a certain type of education or learning – nobility of character," {10}
and which nobility of character is manifest in "the virtues of personal honour
and manners" {10} and which Western culture was also – according to Myatt
and contra modern 'political correctness' – manifest in a natural and necessary
aristocracy composed of those who possess nobility of character and who thus
exemplify καλὸς κἀγαθός.

Rachael Stirling
February 2018

{1} The book The Mystical Philosophy of David Myatt by Wright & Parker is an
informative guide to Myatt's philosophy. The book is available as a gratis open
access pdf document here: https://regardingdavidmyatt.files.wordpress.com
/2018/01/myatt-mystic-philosophy-second-edition.pdf

{2} Education And The Culture Of Pathei-Mathos. 2014.

{3} A Slowful Learning, Perhaps. 2012.

{4} Questions of Good, Evil, Honour, and God, Part Five. 2013.

{5} A Slowful Learning, Perhaps. 2012.

{6} Questions For DWM. 2015.

{7} Blue Reflected Starlight. 2012.

{8} qv. The Numinous Balance of Honour section of the chapter The Way of
Pathei-Mathos – A Philosophical Compendium in Myatt's 2013 book The
Numinous Way of Pathei-Mathos.

{9} Questions For DWM, 2015.

{10} Tu Es Diaboli Ianua. 2017

 A New Pagan Metaphysics

In November of 2017 David Myatt published his book Classical Paganism And
The Christian Ethos in which he described his view of the difference between
Christianity and the paganism of Ancient Greece and Rome and set out to, in his
words, develope that "paganism in a metaphysical way, beyond the deities of
classical mythos."

This was followed a month later by his Tu Es Diaboli Ianua and in which
iconoclastic work he provided his answers to particular metaphysical questions
such as whether Christianity really is a suitable presencing of the numinous. If
it is not, "then what non-Christian alternatives – such as a paganus metaphysics
– exist, and what is the foundation of such an alternative."

While these books are not expositions of his philosophy they not only provide
interesting and relevant insights into Christianity and classical paganism but
also illuminate particular aspects of his own philosophy. For instance, in Tu Es
Diaboli Ianua he writes that "the numinous is primarily a manifestation of the
muliebral," and that revealed religions such as Christianity, Islam, and Judaism
primarily manifest a presencing of the masculous. In Classical Paganism And
The Christian Ethos he writes that "the quintessence of such a weltanschauung,
of the paganus ethos, is that ethics are presenced in and by particular living
individuals, not in some written text whether philosophical or otherwise, not by
some proposed schemata, and not in some revelation from some deity."

In both books he makes use of the Greek term καλὸς κἀγαθός stating, in
Classical Paganism And The Christian Ethos, that this

"means those who conduct themselves in a gentlemanly or lady-like

manner and who thus manifest – because of their innate physis or
through pathei-mathos or through a certain type of education or
learning – nobility of character."

In Tu Es Diaboli Ianua he writes that

"καλὸς κἀγαθός is an awareness and acceptance of one’s civic duties

and responsibilities undertaken not because of any personal benefit
(omni utilitate) that may result or be expected, and not because an
omnipotent deity has, via some written texts, commanded it and will
punish a refusal, but because it is the noble, the honourable – the
gentlemanly, the lady-like, the human – thing to do […]

[T]he virtues of personal honour and manners, with their

responsibilities, presence the fairness, the avoidance of hubris, the
natural harmonious balance, the gender equality, the awareness and
appreciation of the divine, that is the numinous."
Which in my view neatly sums up his philosophy of pathei-mathos, particularly
given his statement that the numinous is primarily a manifestation of the
muliebral, and that

"a muliebral presencing is or would be manifest [in] muliebral virtues,

such as empathy, sensitivity, gentleness, compassion; and in the
perception that personal love should triumph over and above
adherence to abstractions. Considered exoterically – not interiorly, not
esoterically – a muliebral presencing is manifest in a personal, varied,
worship and devotion; in a personal weltanschauung and not in a
religion; has no hierarchy; no creed, no article or articles of faith; and
no texts whether written or aural."

As he notes in his short essay From Mythoi To Empathy {1}, "the faculty of
empathy is the transition from mythoi and anthropomorphic deities (theos and
theoi) to an appreciation of the numinous sans denotatum and sans religion."

He thus outlines a new ‘pagan’ metaphysics, or rather provides an

understandable description of his own weltanschauung, which is

"of we human beings having a connexion to other living beings, a

connexion to the cosmos beyond, and a connexion to the source of our
existence, the source of the cosmos, and the source – the origin, the
genesis – of all living beings. Which source we cannot correctly
describe in words, by any denotata, or define as some male ‘god’, or
even as a collection of deities whether male or female, but which we
can apprehend through the emanations of Being: through what is
living, what is born, what unfolds in a natural manner, what is ordered
and harmonious, what changes, and what physically – in its own
species of Time – dies.

An awareness of all these connexions is awareness of, and a respect

for, the numinous, for these connexions, being acausal, are affective:
that is, we are inclined by our physis (whether we apprehend it or not)
to have an influence on that which, or those whom, the connexion is to
or from. For what we do or do not do, consciously or otherwise, affects
or can affect the cosmos and thus the other livings beings which exist
in the cosmos, and it is a conscious awareness of connexions and
acausal affects, with their causal consequences, which reason,
perceiverance, and empathy make us – or can make us – aware of.
Which awareness may incline us toward acting, and living, in a noble
way, with what is noble known or experienced, discovered, through
and because of (i) the personal virtue of honour, evident as honour is
in fairness, manners and a balanced demeanour, and (ii) the wordless
knowing of empathy, manifest as empathy is in compassion and
tolerance.

For Being is also, and importantly, presenced – manifest to us, as

 mortals possessed of reason, empathy, and perceiverance – through
certain types of individuals and thus through the particular ways of
living that nurture or encourage such individuals. These types of
individuals are those who have empathy and who live and if necessary
die by honour and thus who have nobility of character." {2}

Those "certain types of individuals" who presence Being are of course those
who manifest καλὸς κἀγαθός, and thus those who, in Myatt’s words, manifest
chivalry, manners, gentrice romance; and the muliebral virtues, {3} which
virtues include "empathy, sensitivity, gentleness, compassion" as well as "the
perception that personal love should triumph over and above adherence to
abstractions." {4}

JR Wright
2018

{1} The essay is available here: https://davidmyatt.wordpress.com/2018/01

/04/from-mythoi-to-empathy/

{2} Classical Paganism And The Christian Ethos, Epilogos. CreateSpace, 2017.
ISBN 978-1979599023.

{3} From Mythoi To Empathy.

{4} Tu Es Diaboli Ianua, chapter III. CreateSpace, 2017. ISBN

978-1982010935.
 Appendix I

Concerning ἀγαθός and νοῦς in the Corpus Hermeticum

Three of the many Greek terms of interest in respect of understanding the

varied weltanschauungen outlined in the texts that comprise the Corpus
Hermeticum are ἀγαθός and νοῦς and θεός, with conventional translations of
these terms as 'good' and 'Mind' and 'god' (or God) imparting the sense of
reading somewhat declamatory sermons about god/God and 'the good' familiar
from over a thousand years of persons preaching about Christianity
interspersed with definitive philosophical statements about 'Mind', as if a
"transcendent intelligence, rationality," or a "Mental or psychic faculty" or both,
or something similar, is meant or implied.

Thus the beginning of tractate VI – τὸ ἀγαθόν, ὦ ᾿Ασκληπιέ, ἐν οὐδενί ἐστιν, εἰ

μὴ ἐν μόνῳ τῷ θεῷ, μᾶλλον δὲ τὸ ἀγαθὸν αὐτός ἐστιν ὁ θεὸς ἀεί – and dealing
as it does with both ἀγαθός and θεός, has been translated, by Mead, as "Good,
O Asclepius, is in none else save God alone; nay, rather, Good is God Himself
eternally," [1] and by Copenhaver as "The good, Asclepius, is in nothing except
in god alone, or rather god himself is always the good." [2]

In respect of νοῦς, a typical example is from Poemandres 12 – ὁ δὲ πάντων

πατὴρ ὁ Νοῦς, ὢν ζωὴ καὶ φῶς, ἀπεκύησεν ῎Ανθρωπον αὐτῷ ἴσον, οὗ ἠράσθη
ὡς ἰδίου τόκου· περικαλλὴς γάρ, τὴν τοῦ πατρὸς εἰκόνα ἔχων· ὄντως γὰρ καὶ ὁ
θεὸς ἠράσθη τῆς ἰδίας μορφῆς, παρέδωκε τὰ ἑαυτοῦ πάντα δημιουργήματα. The
beginning of this is translated by Mead as "But All-Father Mind, being Life and
Light, did bring forth Man co-equal to Himself, with whom He fell in love, as
being His own child for he was beautiful beyond compare," and by Copenhaver
as "Mind, the father of all, who is life and light, gave birth to a man like himself
whom he loved as his own child. The man was most fair: he had the father's
image."

Similarly, in respect of Poemandres 22 – παραγίνομαι αὐτὸς ἐγὼ ὁ Νοῦς τοῖς

ὁσίοις καὶ ἀγαθοῖς καὶ καθαροῖς καὶ ἐλεήμοσι, τοῖς εὐσεβοῦσι, καὶ ἡ παρουσία
μου γίνεται βοήθεια, καὶ εὐθὺς τὰ πάντα γνωρίζουσι καὶ τὸν πατέρα
ἱλάσκονται ἀγαπητικῶς καὶ εὐχαριστοῦσιν εὐλογοῦντες καὶ ὑμνοῦντες
τεταγμένως πρὸς αὐτὸν τῇ στοργῇ – which is translated by Mead as "I, Mind,
myself am present with holy men and good, the pure and merciful, men who live
piously. [To such] my presence doth become an aid, and straightway they gain
gnosis of all things, and win the Father's love by their pure lives, and give Him
thanks, invoking on Him blessings, and chanting hymns, intent on Him with
ardent love," and by Copenhaver as "I myself, the mind, am present to the
blessed and good and pure and merciful – to the reverent – and my presence
becomes a help; they quickly recognize everything, and they propitiate the
father lovingly and give thanks, praising and singing hymns affectionately and
in the order appropriate to him."

As explained in various places in my commentary on tractates I, III, IV, VIII, and

XI, and in two appendices [3], I incline toward the view that – given what such
English terms as 'the good', Mind, and god now impute, often as a result of two
thousand years of Christianity and post-Renaissance, and modern, philosophy –
such translations tend to impose particular and modern interpretations on the
texts and thus do not present to the reader the ancient ethos that forms the
basis of the varied weltanschauungen outlined in the texts of the Corpus
Hermeticum.

To avoid such impositions, and in an endeavour to express at least something of

that ancient (and in my view non-Christian) ethos, I have – for reasons explained
in the relevant sections of my commentary – transliterated θεὸς as theos [4],
νοῦς as perceiveration, or according to context, perceiverance; and ἀγαθός as,
according to context, nobility, noble, or honourable [5]. Which is why my reading
of the Greek of the three examples above provides the reader with a somewhat
different impression of the texts:

° Asclepius, the noble exists in no-thing: only in theos alone; indeed,

theos is, of himself and always, what is noble. [6]

° Perceiveration, as Life and phaos, father of all, brought forth in his

own likeness a most beautiful mortal who, being his child, he loved.

° I, perceiveration, attend to those of respectful deeds, the

honourable, the refined, the compassionate, those aware of the
numinous; to whom my being is a help so that they soon acquire
knowledge of the whole and are affectionately gracious toward the
father, fondly celebrating in song his position.

But, as I noted in respect of ἀγαθός in the On Ethos And Interpretation

appendix, whether these particular insights of mine are valid, others will have
to decide. But they – and my translations of the tractates in general – certainly,
at least in my fallible opinion, convey an impression about ancient Hermeticism
which is rather different from that conveyed by other translations.

David Myatt
March 2017

Extract from a letter in reply to a correspondent who, in respect of the Corpus Hermeticum,
enquired about my translation of terms such as ἀγαθός and νοῦς. I have, for publication here,
added a footnote which references my translations of and commentaries on five tractates of the
Corpus Hermeticum.
°°°
Notes

[1] G.R.S Mead. Thrice-Greatest Hermes. Theosophical Society (London). 1906.

[2] B. Copenhaver. Hermetica. Cambridge University Press. 1992

[3] My translation of and commentary on tractates I, III, IV, VIII and XI are
available in my book Corpus Hermeticum:
Eight Tractates. International Standard Book Number: 978-1976452369

[4] To be pedantic, when θεὸς is mentioned in the texts it often literally refers to
'the' theos so that at the beginning of tractate VI, for example, the reference is
to 'the theos' rather than to 'god'.

[5] In respect of 'the good' – τὸ ἀγαθόν – as 'honourable', qv. Seneca, Ad

Lucilium Epistulae Morales, LXXI, 4, "summum bonum est quod honestum est.
Et quod magis admireris: unum bonum est, quod honestum est, cetera falsa et
adulterina bona sunt."

[6] The suggestion seems to be that 'the theos' is the origin, the archetype, of
what is noble, and that only through and because of theos can what is noble be
presenced and recognized for what it is, and often recognized by those who are,
or that which is, an eikon of theos. Hence why in tractate IV it is said that "the
eikon will guide you,"; why in tractate XI that "Kosmos is the eikon of theos,
Kosmos [the eikon] of Aion, the Sun [the eikon] of Aion, and the Sun [the eikon]
of mortals," and why in the same tractate it is said that "there is nothing that
cannot be an eikon of theos," and why in Poemandres 31 theos is said to
"engender all physis as eikon."

As I noted in my commentary – qv. especially the mention of Maximus of

Constantinople in respect of Poemandres 31 – I have transliterated εἰκὼν.
 Appendix II

A Review Of Myatt's Classical Paganism And The Christian Ethos

Classical Paganism And The Christian Ethos . 2017.

International Standard Book Number 978-1979599023. 42 pages. 

In the Fall of 2017 David Myatt released extracts from his forthcoming book
Classical Paganism And The Christian Ethos and which extracts led dozens of
individuals interested in Myatt's works to eagerly await the publication of the
book itself given that such extracts seemed to imply that he intended to create a
modern, Western, paganism founded on the warrior ethos of ancient Greece and
Rome, with Myatt in his extract writing that

"such a modern paganus weltanschauung may also be a means to

reconnect those in the lands of the West, and those in Western émigré
lands and former colonies of the West, with their ancestral ethos, for
them to thus become, or return to being, a living, dwelling, part – a
connexion between the past and the future – of what is still a living,
and evolving, culture. Perhaps the future of that culture depends on
whether sufficient individuals can live by the high personal standards
of such a modern paganus weltanschauung."

However, when Myatt issued the first draft of the complete book in early
November 2017 some individuals were disappointed since the promised
'modern paganus weltanschauung' seemed to be just a watered-down version of
his mystical philosophy of pathei mathos. Myatt, as is his wont, then over
several weeks revised this draft many times {1} culminating on November 9th
2017 in a printed version – a so-called 'second edition' – together with an
updated 'gratis open access' pdf version containing the same text and which he
made available on his internet blog. {2}

As Myatt notes in the Introduction to the printed edition: "For this Second
Edition, I have clarified and extended the text in several places, added a revised
version of my essay From Aeschylus To The Numinous Way as an Appendix, and
taken the opportunity to correct some typos."

As the blurb for the book states, it is

"a study in the difference between Christianity and the paganism of

Ancient Greece and Rome, evident as that paganism is in the writings
of Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Cicero and many other classical
authors. A study which includes developing that paganism in a
metaphysical way, beyond the deities of classical mythos, thus making
such paganism relevant to the modern Western world. A modern
development which involves an analysis of the texts of the Corpus
Hermeticum."
The final published work does indeed develop Greco-Roman paganism in a
metaphysical way, with Myatt writing in chapter 3 that

"the quintessence of such a weltanschauung, of the paganus ethos, is

that ethics are presenced in and by particular living individuals, not in
some written text whether philosophical or otherwise, not by some
proposed schemata, and not in some revelation from some deity.
Which paganus ethics, when evolved – combined with the paganus
mysticism evident in the Corpus Hermeticum and the cultural pathei-
mathos of the past two millennia presenced through the insight of
empathy – leads us to a modern paganus weltanschauung."

He concludes his study by writing that

"the paganus weltanschauung, ancestral to the lands of the West, that

has emerged is one which, shorn of technical, Greek, and
metaphysical terms, many may find familiar or already be intuitively
aware of […]

[This] awareness of all these connexions is awareness of, and a

respect for, the numinous, for these connexions, being acausal, are
affective: that is, we are inclined by our physis (whether we
apprehend it or not) to have an influence on that which, or those
whom, the connexion is to or from. For what we do or do not do,
consciously or otherwise, affects or can affect the cosmos and thus the
other livings beings which exist in the cosmos, and it is a conscious
awareness of connexions and acausal affects, with their causal
consequences, which reason, perceiverance, and empathy make us –
or can make us – aware of. Which awareness may incline us toward
acting, and living, in a noble way, with what is noble known or
experienced, discovered, through and because of (i) the personal
virtue of honour, evident as honour is in fairness, manners and a
balanced demeanour, and (ii) the wordless knowing of empathy,
manifest as empathy is in compassion and tolerance."

For the crux of his argument is that Western paganism differs fundamentally
from – and is better than – a revealed religion such as Christianity because in
that paganism ethics are "presenced in and by particular living individuals, not
in some written text whether philosophical or otherwise, not by some proposed
schemata, and not in some revelation from some deity," in contrast to
Christianity whose ethics can be discovered by having to interpret "the word of
God" as found in the texts of the Old and New Testaments. He adds that "a
reliance on written texts, as in Christianity, may well be a mistake."

His modern pagan metaphysics therefore balances the Greco-Roman human

ideal – which Myatt writes can be expressed in one Greek phrase: καλὸς
κἀγαθός – with the insights resulting from millennia of pathei mathos,
expressed in Studia Humanitatis, in what he calls 'the culture of pathei-mathos'.
{3}

As a result, the book – replete with copious quotations in Ancient and

Hellenistic Greek – is curiously interesting explaining much about Greco-Roman
paganism and hermeticism, as well as about Christianity. Yet it is difficult to
know who the intended readers are since many of those interested in Western
paganism as a new way of life or as a modern, non-Christian, spirituality may
find it too academic or too boring; while those academically interested in such
matters will doubtless turn to other authors given Myatt's experiential Faustian
quests, his iconoclasm, his often underserved reputation, and thus his exclusion
from academia.

Perhaps Myatt intended the book for those few individuals who can or who
aspire "to live by the high personal standards of such a modern paganus
weltanschauung" because such a paganism may reconnect some of "those in the
lands of the West, and those in Western émigré lands and former colonies of the
West, with their ancestral ethos".

R.S & K.S

November, 2017

N.B. As with almost all of Myatt's printed books, the size is idiosyncratic, being 11 inches x 8.5
inches in format, which is larger than the conventional 'trade paperback' (6 inches by 9 inches).
In terms of number of pages, 20+ pages should be added to such 'large format' books in order
to approximate the number of pages in a standard 6 inches by 9 inches paperback.

°°°°°

{1} In our view Myatt is to be commended for making public his revisions of his
texts. As someone recently wrote: "The extracts and subsequent revised
extracts from his texts and translations that Myatt has published on his blog
over the years provide an interesting insight into the creative process. A
process which many authors and academics for some reason seem to want to
keep secret. Perhaps some of them want to try and hide their mistakes or how
their thoughts and opinions change or evolve as a result of further research, or
more inspiration, or more thought."

{2}  https://davidmyatt.wordpress.com/2017/11/05/reason-and-belief/

{3} This 'culture of pathei mathos' is one of the central themes of Myatt's
philosophy of pathei-mathos. See his essay Education and the Culture of Pathei-
Mathos, included in his 2014 book One Vagabond In Exile From The Gods. The
essay is also available here: https://regardingdavidmyatt.wordpress.com
/2017/11/10/education-and-the-culture-of-pathei-mathos-2/
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