Hidden Wisdom: The Secrets of the Western Esoteric Tradition

by Tim Wallace-Murphy

From Egyptian mythology to Jewish mysticism, Rome and Greece to the druids and the gnostics, Tim WallaceMurphy exposes a fascinating lineage of hidden mysteries and secret societies, continuing through the Templars, Rosicrucians, and Freemasons to our modern visionaries. This hidden stream of spirituality and that of sacred knowledge are inseparably entwined to form the single most important continuous strand in the entire Western esoteric tradition. This tradition exerted a seminal influence on the thinking of the builders of the great cathedrals/ leading teachers in ecclesiastical schools/ philosophers/ playwrights/ poets such as Shakespeare, Goethe, Blake, and W. B. Yeats/ and on artists and Renaissance giants such as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. It is also the root from which sprang alchemy and modern science. Now, as more people are looking to find information on the alternatives to dominant religions and dogmas that have told us what to think and how to behave, as faith has been questioned by religious scandals, economic meltdowns, and an increasingly sick planet Earth, WallaceMurphy reveals the secrets of the masters, including invaluable spiritual insights into everyday life that have been hidden throughout the ages. He shows us who kept this spiritual tradition alive despite appalling persecution, so that we in the twentyfirst century might benefit from its accumulated fruits and ennoble our lives. Hidden Wisdom will be of immense interest to readers of the number one bestseller The Lost Symbol as it explains much of Dan Brown's focus on the ancient mysteries.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Philosophy

340 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2010

About the author

The Irish born internationally known author and lecturer, Tim Wallace-Murphy, is the author of thirteen published books, has appeared in some eight or nine TV documentaries and has given lectures from Seattle and Long Beach on the West Coast of the USA, in Canada, Great Britain, France, Italy and in Prague.

Eleven of his works cover historical aspects of spirituality, including the Knights Templar, the Cathars, Rosslyn Chapel and the Western Esoteric Tradition as well as the Grail genre. The other two, including the most recent are more mainstream, namely 'What Islam did for Us' a study of how Islamic scholarship laid the foundations of so many fundamental and valued aspects of European culture and his latest work 'The Genesis of a Tragedy - A Brief History of the Palestinian People.' Tim was provoked to write this work as the Palestinian side of this conflict is rarely heard in either Western Europe or the United States and if this ongoing running sore in East West relations is ever to be solved, the pain on both sides needs to be understood.

He also acts as a tour guide in some of the most beautiful and inspiring sacred sites in Europe.

Reviews

[Owen Spencer · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really loved the first six chapters of this book. They were a well-written, highly informative, and insightful summary of spiritual approaches that existed prior to Christianity. Then I read Chapter 7 and was extremely disappointed. In fact, I was so disappointed that I decided to stop reading the book altogether. Here's my criticism: The first six chapters were written in a largely objective manner, which I appreciated. Then, starting in Chapter 7 the author's strong biases hijack the book in a manner that is both over-the-top and annoying. What starts out as a respectable, objective historical work suddenly turns into a bitter, scholarly rant against Christianity, The Bible, and (especially) the Catholic Church. The entire tone and writing style of the book dramatically changes at that point. It becomes clear that the real focus of the book is an attempt to elevate ancient and alternative approaches to spirituality by tearing down the competition (i.e., Christianity). The author's bias is obvious in that he presents as valid any historical document that supports his ideas and then either ignores (or terribly misinterprets) documents and historical evidence that plainly contradict his arguments. Here is my personal message to the author: If you want people to study this stuff, keep it positive and leave your biased opinions and rants to yourself. A more appropriate title for this book would be "Why Christians are wrong and everyone else is right".

[Christopher Sutch · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a caveat for this review: I have not read any of Wallace-Murphy's other work and that deficit possibly explains my reaction to this work. I bought it hoping to learn something substantive about the "secrets of the Western esoteric tradition," but that subtitle is misleading. Wallace-Murphy writes very little indeed about the "secrets" of this tradition, and what he does write about it is either mistaken or self-contradictory (quite possibly deliberately so). This book appears to be a synthesis of several of his previous works along with the work of similarly minded writers. It takes a chronological view of Western civilization from prehistory through the first decade of the 21st century (although, with his advocacy of the "Aquarian Age," Wallace-Murphy could be seen as actually stuck somewhere in the 1960s-1970s in terms of his mystical thinking; most of the book is written as if 9/11 had never happened and that anything is possible for humanity if only we believed hard enough). His major claim is that the "Western esoteric tradition" is basically Gnosticism, which he claims was transmitted from ancient Egypt in an unbroken line of initiation through to at least the Knights Templar and the Masons. Wallace-Murphy never cites a scholarly source for his understanding of gnosticism (certainly not Elaine Pagels, which for most scholars would be their go-to source). Along the way he reviews the sins of the Catholic and Protestant faiths (though even here he is inconsistent: he damns the Catholics, rightly so, for the brutality of the genocide of the Cathars, but also seems to prefer the tenets of the Catholic faith to those of Protestantism, which he blames for the gradual move toward secular science and humanity's alienation from the spiritual side of science and life. His greatest fault, however, is a contradiction in his understanding of the implications of a gnostic worldview. He admires the 'gnostic" Cathars for their lack of fear at being killed (they would, after all, be united with the true God and freed from the material cage trapping their divine essence in a corrupt body; so far, so good). However, his (quite justifiable) concerns about ecology and pacifism he _also_ claims as gnostic concerns, even though a true gnostic would understand that the entire existence of the universe is the greatest sin: created by a self-centered Demiurge playing at being God, all matter is sinful, a trap for the spirit, and must be escaped from. This being so, why would any gnostic care about whether we harm our environment or whether we free people from this soul-trapping universe by killing them? Any gnostic wouldn't care, they would welcome it.

Part of Wallace-Murphy's problem in this book is that he is really unable to unite the "esoteric" parts of his argument with the cultural/historical parts. The work is very disjointed and feels like an attempt to capture absolutely everything about everything (which just gets tiresome). He also frequently cites only _one_ source for the major topics he discusses. For example, while Eric Hobsbawm is a great (marxist) historian, a true scholar would not rely solely on Hobsbawn to talk about economic and imperial history; there should be a variety of sources consulted, if only to ensure that the author properly comprehends the diverse viewpoints on his subject matter. This Wallace-Murphy fails to do at every give turn.

There is nothing terrible about this book, but it does aptly illustrate the problems an autodidact faces in trying to write a properly knowledgeable work about something (let alone everything under the sun).

[EC · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent book of truthful speculation

[JjJlJr]

For any of you out there who are questioning Christian or Judaic beliefs and/or origins, this would be a good book for you. I think the heart of this book is Spirituality, and the effects of it not being present in modern western religions, versus it being plentiful in Eastern religions. This author cites all his resources (for those skeptic religious people out there), and his arguments are very plausible. An excellent read!