Archeosophy
Encyclopedia
Archeosophy is an original form of Esoteric Christianity
developed by Tommaso Palamidessi
in the late 1960s.
to express the "Wisdom of God". This very word was then used in the 20th century by Tommaso Palamidessi, who founded Archeosofica, a school of esoteric Christianity in 1968. According to him,
and an anthroposophist
, his doctrinal teachings, expressed in his booklets, have a lot in common with Theosophy
and Anthroposophy
grounded on Christian Theology
. In Palamidessi’s line of thought, Archeosophy is first of all a pure experimental method, therefore its doctrine is a philosophy a posteriori
.
Archeosophy, according to Palamidessi’s definition, is an interpretation of Christianity
grounded on the principles of methodical experimentation in order to know "the superior worlds, ourselves and God, through the development of new senses, defined as spiritual". According to Palamidessi, the main goal of Archeosophy is to indicate spiritual methods and practical techniques which will lead the individual to directly experience supersensible worlds. These techniques stem from a deep reprocessing of ancient ascetic methods, including those of Yoga
, Christianity
and other Western and Eastern traditions.
and present in every reincarnation. The Ego itself can be considered as composed by three principles or aspects (a Spirit
, an Emotive Soul and an Erosdynamic Soul) and a subtle body
(the Causal body
) which survives through all the different reincarnations and records the strongest memories of past lives. According to Palamidessi's analysis, the Spirit is the will, the intellect, the memory, the intuition of the eternal truths, the religious and merciful love; the Emotive Soul is the center of gravity of the emotive sphere of consciousness, while the Erosdynamic Soul indicates the center of gravity inherent in the erotic, generative psychic sphere.
.
According to Palamidessi, the lesser Guardian of the Threshold is not a spirit but a ghost
, an energetic charge of base instincts, and it belongs to the world of the images of the hereafter. The Guardian is a kind of echo or mirror of thoughts and actions made by the individual. "In fact, like the echo of our voice that resounds in the valley but which, being neither us nor our voice, is nevertheless a reflected vibration of our voice, so, the Guardian of the Threshold is the ego of our Ego [...]. A feeling of hatred does not finish with the action of hating, but remains recorded in the elemental being, in this imitation of nature, because an action of hatred is accompanied by a concentrated will and thought, that constitutes a process of meditation, and therefore a creating process. In the final analysis, one is persecuted by what the thinker has thought."
The lesser Guardian of the Threshold is therefore a separate new subtle body, moldable in good or bad, which every Ego received the faculty to create in its own image and likeness. This spectral figure is the abstract of the debit and credit book of the individual and, according to the archeosophical teachings, it is destined to be the body of resurrection
. The aim of archeosophical meditation techniques and ascetic exercises is to form a beautiful Guardian of the Threshold, as it will become the body of resurrection.
The archeosophical ascetic program is developed by Palamidessi in more than fifty booklets of Archeosophy. These monographical booklets cover a wide range of topics. Each of them is generally split into a theoretical part and a practical part, the latter usually exposing a technique related with the topic of the booklet. Among all the archeosophical techniques proposed in these booklets, some are considered as extraordinarily important. They are bilocation (out-of-body experience
), remembrance of past lives
and spiritualistic communications
. Beside these techniques, special attention has to be given to the practice of Cardiognosis
, a form of hesychast meditation on the center of the heart which, according to Palamidessi, will lead to a soft and free-of-danger awakening of kundalini
. Other archeosophical techniques include iconography
, sacred music, breathing techniques
, simbolurgy, Christian and yoga meditation
and more.
, the term Archeosophy is often used to indicate Archeosofica
or the Archeosophical Society
, both founded by Tommaso Palamidessi. In fact, Archeosophy, Archeosofica and Archeosophical Society are three different things:
Esoteric Christianity
Esoteric Christianity is a term which refers to an ensemble of spiritual currents which regard Christianity as a mystery religion, and profess the existence and possession of certain esoteric doctrines or practices, hidden from the public but accessible only to a narrow circle of "enlightened",...
developed by Tommaso Palamidessi
Tommaso Palamidessi
Tommaso Palamidessi was an Italian esotericist. Precociously attracted by astrology, parapsychology and yoga-tantric doctrines, he was led by his manifold interests in the field of the occult and by his intense spiritual pursuit to build up an original form of Esoteric Christianity, which he...
in the late 1960s.
Definition
The origin of the term Archeosophy can be found in the Pauline EpistlesPauline epistles
The Pauline epistles, Epistles of Paul, or Letters of Paul, are the thirteen New Testament books which have the name Paul as the first word, hence claiming authorship by Paul the Apostle. Among these letters are some of the earliest extant Christian documents...
to express the "Wisdom of God". This very word was then used in the 20th century by Tommaso Palamidessi, who founded Archeosofica, a school of esoteric Christianity in 1968. According to him,
Archeosophy is the integral knowledge, the archaic wisdom, the science of the principles; it is the study of the First Causes or the Science of God as the Absolute Principle of every created thing. Archeosophy is a word proposed by the writer, formed by the Greek words ἀρχή = principle, and Σoφíα = wisdom. In its double aspect of experience of life and theoretical doctrine it has the specific aim of illuminating the mind and of stirring the consciousness for the quest and conquest of truth as a necessary Good.
It is a philosophy springing from experience as it rests on the concrete and positive principles of methodical experimentation in order to know the superior worlds, ourselves and God, through the development of new senses, defined as spiritual. Today it is the most complete interpretation of Christianity.
In brief
Since Tommaso Palamidessi was both a theosophistTheosophy
Theosophy, in its modern presentation, is a spiritual philosophy developed since the late 19th century. Its major themes were originally described mainly by Helena Blavatsky , co-founder of the Theosophical Society...
and an anthroposophist
Anthroposophy
Anthroposophy, a philosophy founded by Rudolf Steiner, postulates the existence of an objective, intellectually comprehensible spiritual world accessible to direct experience through inner development...
, his doctrinal teachings, expressed in his booklets, have a lot in common with Theosophy
Theosophy
Theosophy, in its modern presentation, is a spiritual philosophy developed since the late 19th century. Its major themes were originally described mainly by Helena Blavatsky , co-founder of the Theosophical Society...
and Anthroposophy
Anthroposophy
Anthroposophy, a philosophy founded by Rudolf Steiner, postulates the existence of an objective, intellectually comprehensible spiritual world accessible to direct experience through inner development...
grounded on Christian Theology
Christian theology
- Divisions of Christian theology :There are many methods of categorizing different approaches to Christian theology. For a historical analysis, see the main article on the History of Christian theology.- Sub-disciplines :...
. In Palamidessi’s line of thought, Archeosophy is first of all a pure experimental method, therefore its doctrine is a philosophy a posteriori
A Posteriori
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.
Archeosophy, before becoming a doctrine, was and is experience which makes one re-ascend to the first principles, through the practice of numerous asceses, each one, as we shall see, with different characteristics, but with finalities converging towards the Absolute.
Archeosophy, according to Palamidessi’s definition, is an interpretation of Christianity
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
grounded on the principles of methodical experimentation in order to know "the superior worlds, ourselves and God, through the development of new senses, defined as spiritual". According to Palamidessi, the main goal of Archeosophy is to indicate spiritual methods and practical techniques which will lead the individual to directly experience supersensible worlds. These techniques stem from a deep reprocessing of ancient ascetic methods, including those of Yoga
Yoga
Yoga is a physical, mental, and spiritual discipline, originating in ancient India. The goal of yoga, or of the person practicing yoga, is the attainment of a state of perfect spiritual insight and tranquility while meditating on Supersoul...
, Christianity
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
and other Western and Eastern traditions.
Archeosophical techniques have many points in common with the Orphic and Pythagorean Mysteries, with the Egyptian Mysteries and the marvelous practices, always valid at every latitude and in every age, of the Essenes, the Kabbalists and the Alchemists, with the Yoga methods, and those of the Hesychasts of Mount Athos and Kalampaka, of the Islamic Sufis, but they go even further.
Main Elements
Tommaso Palamidessi, in his The Occult Constitution of Man and Woman, described the human being as consisting of two main elements, the Ego and the Personality. Ego indicates the authentic Soul of Man; it is his Individuality, which can manifest itself in a physical body only in part. The Personality, on the other hand, is that part of the Individuality which manifests itself in a given time, in a given reincarnation, in a given particular race, now as a man, now as a woman.The Ego
"Ego" is a conventional term indicating the true individual, immortal, pre-existentPre-existence
Pre-existence , beforelife, or pre-mortal existence refers to the belief that each individual human soul existed before conception, and at conception one of these pre-existent souls enters, or is placed by God, in the body...
and present in every reincarnation. The Ego itself can be considered as composed by three principles or aspects (a Spirit
Spirit
The English word spirit has many differing meanings and connotations, most of them relating to a non-corporeal substance contrasted with the material body.The spirit of a living thing usually refers to or explains its consciousness.The notions of a person's "spirit" and "soul" often also overlap,...
, an Emotive Soul and an Erosdynamic Soul) and a subtle body
Subtle body
A subtle body is one of a series of psycho-spiritual constituents of living beings, according to various esoteric, occult, and mystical teachings...
(the Causal body
Causal body
The Causal body - originally Karana-Sarira - is a Yogic and Vedantic concept that was adopted and modified by Theosophy and from the latter made its way into the general New Age movement and contemporary western esotericism...
) which survives through all the different reincarnations and records the strongest memories of past lives. According to Palamidessi's analysis, the Spirit is the will, the intellect, the memory, the intuition of the eternal truths, the religious and merciful love; the Emotive Soul is the center of gravity of the emotive sphere of consciousness, while the Erosdynamic Soul indicates the center of gravity inherent in the erotic, generative psychic sphere.
The Personality
The Personality, according to Archeosophical teachings, is fourfold. It includes:- the physical body;
- the etheric bodyEtheric bodyThe etheric body, ether-body, æther body, a name given by neo-Theosophy to a supposed vital body or subtle body propounded in esoteric philosophies as the first or lowest layer in the "human energy field" or aura...
, by means of which the vital forces can circulate and manifest themselves; - the astral bodyAstral bodyThe astral body is a subtle body posited by many religious philosophers, intermediate between the intelligent soul and the physical body, composed of a subtle material. The concept ultimately derives from the philosophy of Plato: it is related to an astral plane, which consists of the planetary...
, also called “body of desire” or “emotional body”; - the mental bodyMental bodyThe mental body is one of the subtle bodies in esoteric philosophies, in some religious teachings and in New Age thought. It is understood as a sort of body made up of thoughts, just as the emotional body consists of emotions and the physical body is made up of matter...
, the instrument which manifests the thought of the Ego and therefore of its spirit.
The Lesser Guardian of the Threshold
In addition to all these elements, every man, according to archeosophical teachings, is followed through reincarnations by a spectral projection called the lesser Guardian of the ThresholdGuardian of the Threshold
The Guardian of the Threshold is a menacing figure that is described by a number of leading esoteric teachers. The term "Guardian of the Threshold", often called "dweller on the threshold" indicates a spectral image which is supposed to manifests itself as soon as "the student of the spirit ascends...
.
The reincarnating Ego dons new bodies: mental, astral, etheric and physical, with the vital energy, but the Guardian hangs on to them like a parasite, strengthens the passionate element and gives them a deadly power. The Guardian of the Threshold is a precise automatic warner to show that our personality is not clean, is not naked. It reminds you that you must destroy the old man, to
substitute it with the New man, in accordance with the words of Saint Paul to the Ephesians (IV, 22-24): “Strip yourself
of the old man which is corrupted by following the deceiving passions.... to be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and
put on the new Man who is created in the image of God in the justice and in the holiness that originates from the Truth”.
According to Palamidessi, the lesser Guardian of the Threshold is not a spirit but a ghost
Ghost
In traditional belief and fiction, a ghost is the soul or spirit of a deceased person or animal that can appear, in visible form or other manifestation, to the living. Descriptions of the apparition of ghosts vary widely from an invisible presence to translucent or barely visible wispy shapes, to...
, an energetic charge of base instincts, and it belongs to the world of the images of the hereafter. The Guardian is a kind of echo or mirror of thoughts and actions made by the individual. "In fact, like the echo of our voice that resounds in the valley but which, being neither us nor our voice, is nevertheless a reflected vibration of our voice, so, the Guardian of the Threshold is the ego of our Ego [...]. A feeling of hatred does not finish with the action of hating, but remains recorded in the elemental being, in this imitation of nature, because an action of hatred is accompanied by a concentrated will and thought, that constitutes a process of meditation, and therefore a creating process. In the final analysis, one is persecuted by what the thinker has thought."
The lesser Guardian of the Threshold is therefore a separate new subtle body, moldable in good or bad, which every Ego received the faculty to create in its own image and likeness. This spectral figure is the abstract of the debit and credit book of the individual and, according to the archeosophical teachings, it is destined to be the body of resurrection
Body of resurrection
Body of Resurrection is a typical term of Esoteric Christianity, used to indicate a spiritual body associated with a special enlightenment or experience.-The Doctrine of the Spiritual Body:...
. The aim of archeosophical meditation techniques and ascetic exercises is to form a beautiful Guardian of the Threshold, as it will become the body of resurrection.
Ascetic techniques
According to Palamidessi,
Archeosophy proposes an integral Ascesis, composed, that is, of other integrative asceses which we enumerate as follows:
- Physiological and Psychosomatic Ascesis, for the physical well being and the maximum balance and performability of the body, its energies, to the purpose of making it a temple of the spirit: a necessary basis for preparing a good karma (destiny) in view of the "resurrection of the body", healthy and beautiful.
- Social Ascesis, that is the effort, exercise, methodical and progressive action to become a perfect citizen and to make one-self a spokesman of a new society resting on the pillars of charity, non-violence, reciprocal economic, cultural and spiritual assistance.
- Mystical Ascesis, through an intense devotional life of dialogue with the Divinity; a process of inner transmutation leading to active ecstasy, to the vision of the Light. It is the Alchemist's Opus in White, the entrance into the Waters of Life, the sojourn of the Saints: prelude to a new state of superior ascent towards the Kingdom of God.
- Theurgical Ascesis, or progressing with the rites which attract the friendship and help of God, of the Christ, of the Mother, of the helpful Angelic Spirits, Archangelic and of the Universal Communion of the Adepts and the Saints.
- Magical Ascesis, effort and action to dominate the forces of Nature. Read the definition of Magic we have given in our Encyclopedic Dictionary of Archeosophy (40th Booklet - first part).
- Cosmic Ascesis, action and advance towards a syntony or cosmicization with the whole: stars, elements, skies, etc.
- Sapiential and Initiatic Ascesis, or the spiritual elevation of oneself through the Knowledge and particular practices leading to an inner transmutation and to the qualitative leap. It is the way to come out of the Waters of the phenomenic world, the going beyond the mystical state, it is the christic walking above the Waters. It is the perennial wakefulness and the Alchemist's Opus in Red, that is the royal state of who has finally exited from the game of creation.
The archeosophical ascetic program is developed by Palamidessi in more than fifty booklets of Archeosophy. These monographical booklets cover a wide range of topics. Each of them is generally split into a theoretical part and a practical part, the latter usually exposing a technique related with the topic of the booklet. Among all the archeosophical techniques proposed in these booklets, some are considered as extraordinarily important. They are bilocation (out-of-body experience
Out-of-body experience
An out-of-body experience is an experience that typically involves a sensation of floating outside of one's body and, in some cases, perceiving one's physical body from a place outside one's body ....
), remembrance of past lives
Reincarnation
Reincarnation best describes the concept where the soul or spirit, after the death of the body, is believed to return to live in a new human body, or, in some traditions, either as a human being, animal or plant...
and spiritualistic communications
Spiritualism (beliefs)
Spiritualism is a dualist metaphysical belief that the world is made up of at least two fundamental substances, matter and spirit. This very broad metaphysical distinction is further developed into many and various forms by the inclusion of details about what spiritual entities exist such as a...
. Beside these techniques, special attention has to be given to the practice of Cardiognosis
Cardiognosis
In Christian theology, cardiognosis is a special charism that God confers on some saints. In Christian asceticism, the term Cardiognosis also indicates the ascetical methods and meditation techniques which have the purpose of reaching an inner state of mystical experience and, eventually, the...
, a form of hesychast meditation on the center of the heart which, according to Palamidessi, will lead to a soft and free-of-danger awakening of kundalini
Kundalini
Kundalini literally means coiled. In yoga, a "corporeal energy" - an unconscious, instinctive or libidinal force or Shakti, lies coiled at the base of the spine. It is envisioned either as a goddess or else as a sleeping serpent, hence a number of English renderings of the term such as 'serpent...
. Other archeosophical techniques include iconography
Iconography
Iconography is the branch of art history which studies the identification, description, and the interpretation of the content of images. The word iconography literally means "image writing", and comes from the Greek "image" and "to write". A secondary meaning is the painting of icons in the...
, sacred music, breathing techniques
Pranayama
Pranayama is a Sanskrit word meaning "extension of the prana or breath" or more accurately, "extension of the life force". The word is composed of two Sanskrit words, Prāna, life force, or vital energy, particularly, the breath, and "āyāma", to extend, draw out, restrain, or...
, simbolurgy, Christian and yoga meditation
Meditation
Meditation is any form of a family of practices in which practitioners train their minds or self-induce a mode of consciousness to realize some benefit....
and more.
Archeosofica and the Archeosophical Society
After the foundation of the Archeosophical SocietyArcheosophical Society
The Archeosophical Society is a charitable cultural association founded by Tommaso Palamidessi in 1973. The purpose of the association is to study and develop Archeosophy.- The Archeosophical Society :...
, the term Archeosophy is often used to indicate Archeosofica
Archeosofica
Archeosofica is a school of esoteric Christianity founded by Tommaso Palamidessi in 1968 in Rome.- Archeosofica :The school requires neither a fee nor the subscription of any membership. The school of Archeosofica is free and offers a program of research and of experiments by supplying booklets and...
or the Archeosophical Society
Archeosophical Society
The Archeosophical Society is a charitable cultural association founded by Tommaso Palamidessi in 1973. The purpose of the association is to study and develop Archeosophy.- The Archeosophical Society :...
, both founded by Tommaso Palamidessi. In fact, Archeosophy, Archeosofica and Archeosophical Society are three different things:
- Archeosophy means the Wisdom of God (Archè) or the Science of the Principles.
- Archeosofica is an esoteric school without any legal or financial structure founded by Tommaso Palamidessi in 1968.
- The Archeosophical Society is a non-profit cultural organization with the aim of promoting the study, the develop and diffusion of Archeosophy.
External resources
- The Official Site of the Archeosophical Society (also in Italian, French and Deutsch)