A Short History of Spirit: the Dawn

History we are taught details wars, political conquests, economic progress, and sometimes literature and art.

But the history of the awakening of the conscience is ignored. Here are a few points of reference. Shamanism, is between 30,000 and 50,000 years old. It is the oldest tradition passed in the tribal societies which spread from Siberia to South America and from Australia to the Arctic. In Shamanism, the immaterial mind is the key principle of man and creation. It enters into communion with the forces of nature through hallucinogens or other techniques, it is in search of visions and healing secrets.

If History begins with writing, the cradle of our species lies at Glozel, where was found an alphabet dated 10,000 BP. If History begins with civilization, it started in Atlantis there was more than one hundred thousand years. If History begins when historians decided, the cradle is in Sumer. Thousands of tablets revealed that the biblical Genesis was but the retranscription of stories in their original version. Abraham, the patriarch recognized by Christians, Jews and Muslims was rooted in the city of Ur, located in the heart of Sumer. 

His two sons Isaac and Ishmael are at the source of Judeo-Christianism and Islam, the three religions of the West.

In India, the spiritual source of Hinduism lies in the Vedas, ancient Sanskrit texts, which most important one, the Rig Veda, was written around -1500. The first Vedas are hymns and prayers but the last ones, the Upanishads represent the essence of the spiritual teaching of India. In contrast to Hinduism, thanks to its mythology, its many rituals and deities, the Bouddhism  proposed, around 500 BC, a very plain way to liberate oneself from the cycles of incarnation.

First, its transmission was oral and only five centuries later it was written down in the Pali canon, the basic doctrine of Buddhism that spread throughout Southeast Asia. Introduced in the 7th century in Tibet, Buddhism developed rapidly there under the impetus of several great masters. The Bardo Thodol or Tibetan Book of the Dead is a real guide to go through the different phases of life after death. It is an initiatory teaching of great impact.

Taoism was born around 3000 BC. Lao Tzu would be the author of Tao Te Ching, the sacred book of Taoism. From poetic aphorisms often paradoxical or enigmatic, it proposes an intuitive observation of the universe. Over the centuries Taoism expressed itself firstly through a popular religion, and secondly through an esoteric and alchemical magic. Confucianism is more a moral code that a true inner journey. Its practice is still alive in China.

Egypt has passed on to us its knowledge through the hieroglyphics of the pyramids and sarcophagi and the rolls of papyrus of the Egyptian Book of the Dead. According to Albert Slosman, you can read these writings by three different ways: the exoteric reading taught the masses through images and symbols, the mesoteric reading, also called hieratic, for initiates to the little mysteries of Isis; while the hieroglyphic meaning -and the esoteric reading- are reserved for initiates to the great mysteries of Isis. (source)Albert Slosman, L’histoire commence à Dendérah, Robert Laffont

In the Egyptian temples, Moses received this initiatory education which, under the name of Kabbalah, is at the source of the Hebrew esotericism. The Kabbalah allows us to interpret the secret meaning of the divine mysteries hidden in the Bible. Being the most spread -and most translated in the world- book, the Bible is a book of scriptures which codifies the life of the Jewish people and recounts the experiences and lessons of the prophets succeeding from Abraham and all announcing the coming of the Messiah.