Tobias Churton is Britain’s leading scholar of Western Esotericism, a world authority on Gnosticism, Hermeticism, and Rosicrucianism. He is a filmmaker and the founding editor of the magazine Freemasonry Today. An Honorary Fellow of Exeter University, where he is faculty lecturer in Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry, he holds a master’s degree in Theology from Brasenose College, Oxford, and created the award-winning documentary series and accompanying book The Gnostics, as well as several other films on Christian doctrine, mysticism, and magical folklore. The author of many books, including Gnostic Philosophy, The Invisible History of the Rosicrucians, and Aleister Crowley: The Beast in Berlin, he lives in England.

Provenance
A Note about the Timing of This Book

PART ONE
The Lost Pillars in Antiquity

ONE
Saving Knowledge from Catastrophe: The World’s First Archaeological Story
The Nephilim
Where Could Josephus’s Surviving
Pillar Be Found?

TWO
“Sethites” in Egypt?

THREEEnoch and Hermes: Guardians of Truth
Tracing the Myth
The Emerald Tablet

FOURA Sense of Loss Pervades The Fallen Gnostics: Return of the Sethites

FIVE
How Ancient Is the Ancient Theology?

SIX
A Concise History of Religion

SEVEN
From Apocalyptic to Gnosis--and Back to Religion

PART TWO
Hermetic Philosophy
Seeking Concordance, or Reuniting the Fragments

EIGHT
The Unitive Vision
Kabbalah
Ramon Llull (1232-ca. 1316) 100
The Alembic of Florence: Hermetic Philosophy Reborn

NINE
Restoring Harmony: From the Sun to Infinity
Francesco Giorgi: Cosmic Harmony
Copernicus
Giordano Bruno (1548-1600)

TEN
The Lost Pillars of Freemasonry
Late Medieval Evidence for Antediluvian Pillars
Antediluvian Masonry

ELEVEN
Esoteric Masonry and the Mystery of the “Acception”
John Dee and Primal Mathematics

TWELVE
The Return of Enoch
“Out of Egypt I Have Called My Son”

THIRTEENEnter Isaac Newton

FOURTEEN
“A History of the Corruption of the Soul of Man”
The Temple of Wisdom
The Ancients Knew Already
Newton and the “Daimon”

FIFTEEN
Antiquarianism: Stukeley and Blake
Stukeley, Freemasonry, and the Prisca Sapientia

SIXTEEN
Blake and the Original Religion
All Religions Are One

SEVENTEENFrom the Enlightenment to Theosophy: Persistence of Antediluvian Unity of Science and Religion
The Tradition
Saint-Yves d’Alveydre
The Secret Doctrine
Problems with Theosophical Influence

EIGHTEEN
The Aim of Religion, the Method of Science: Aleister Crowley and Thelema
Science and Antediluvian Mythology

PART THREE Paradise Regained?

NINETEEN
Back to the One
Essential Communion in Esoteric Systems
Religion for the Future

TWENTY
Return of the Lost Pillar

NOTES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX