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Conspiracy file · Since c. 585 BC

Philosophy

Philosophia, the love of wisdom: the Greek habit, begun around 600 BC, of explaining the world by argument instead of myth. Its first practitioners were also astronomers, mystics and members of secret brotherhoods, which is how philosophy and the mystery schools got tangled together.

Also known as Love of wisdom · Philosophia · Natural philosophy

On the recordTimelineFrom the comicsIn Paranoid American comicsSources & further reading

Philosophy, a panel from a Paranoid American comic
From Secret Mystery School #2

The story

Greek tradition starts with Thales of Miletus, who is said to have predicted the solar eclipse of 585 BC and who taught that everything comes from water. Aristotle called him and his successors physiologoi, students of nature. Within two centuries the Greeks had produced Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Parmenides and Democritus, and a set of questions about being, change and knowledge that is still on the syllabus.

Then came Athens. Socrates, executed in 399 BC, made philosophy a matter of how to live; his student Plato founded the Academy around 387 BC, and Plato's student Aristotle opened the Lyceum in 335 BC. Their schools lasted for centuries and, through Arabic and Latin translators, shaped medieval thought. The word even stayed in use for science: Newton's 1687 masterwork is the Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy.

The mystery angle is just as old. Pythagoras ran his school like a religious order, Plato borrowed the language of initiation, and his Phaedo calls philosophy a practice for dying. Neoplatonists such as Iamblichus mixed philosophy with ritual, and esoteric writers from Manly P. Hall onward have argued that the great philosophers were initiates passing on one hidden teaching. In Secret Mystery School that is literally true: the philosophers run the school.

Memorandum for the recordSubject: Philosophy

On the record

  1. Herodotus says Thales of Miletus predicted a solar eclipse; it is usually identified with the eclipse of May 28, 585 BC (Histories 1.74).
  2. Aristotle called the early natural philosophers physiologoi, those who give an account of nature (physis).
  3. Pythagoras is said to have been the first to call himself a philosopher, a "lover of wisdom" (Diogenes Laertius, Book VIII).
  4. The Delphic oracle told Socrates' friend Chaerephon that no one was wiser than Socrates (Plato, Apology 21a).
  5. Socrates was tried and executed in Athens in 399 BC.
  6. Plato founded the Academy around 387 BC; Aristotle opened the Lyceum in 335 BC.
  7. In 529 the emperor Justinian barred pagans from teaching, traditionally the end of the Platonic school at Athens.

The theory

  • There is one perennial philosophy, a single ancient wisdom behind every school and religion (Agostino Steuco, 1540; Aldous Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy, 1945).
  • The great Greek philosophers were initiates who learned in the temples of Egypt and Babylon and taught in code (Manly P. Hall, The Secret Teachings of All Ages, 1928).
  • Greek philosophy was taken from Egyptian mystery schools without credit (George G. M. James, Stolen Legacy, 1954; rejected by most historians).
  • Newton was as much alchemist as scientist: "not the first of the age of reason" but "the last of the magicians" (John Maynard Keynes, 1946).

Timeline

  1. 585 BCThales' eclipse
  2. c. 530 BCPythagoras founds his school at Croton
  3. 399 BCSocrates is executed
  4. c. 387 BCPlato founds the Academy
  5. 335 BCAristotle opens the Lyceum
  6. c. 306 BCEpicurus opens the Garden in Athens
  7. AD 529Justinian closes the pagan schools
  8. 1687Newton's Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy
  9. 1945Aldous Huxley's The Perennial Philosophy

From the comics

Panels straight from the page. Click one to read it full size.

From Secret Mystery School #2 · Page 5

Seek the Arcane Physiologoi

Stuck in Ur with a priest and an iPad, the group learns where to go for help: the Arcane Physiologoi, at the temple of Apollo in Delphi. The name is real. Aristotle used it for the first Greek philosophers, the ones who tried to explain nature without the gods.

Seek the Arcane Physiologoi, 1 of 3 Seek the Arcane Physiologoi, 2 of 3
Seek the Arcane Physiologoi, 3 of 3
  1. Four centuries takes us back to the Scientific Revolution, whose scientists called themselves natural philosophers. Newton's 1687 book is the Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy.
  2. Physiologoi: Aristotle's word for the early thinkers, from Thales on, who looked for the basic stuff of nature (physis). Delphi is also where the oracle declared that no one was wiser than Socrates.
  3. Omphalos means "navel": in the myth Zeus released two eagles from opposite ends of the world and they met at Delphi. A carved stone omphalos is on display in the Delphi Archaeological Museum, and the temple's forecourt carried the maxim "Know thyself".

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