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RETURN TO THE ARCHETYPE

'...and I knew the Golden Age was all about me, and it was
we who had

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NIGEL JACKSON
About Nigel Jackson
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RETURN TO THE
ARCHETYPE
Return to the Archetype

been blind to it but that it had never passed away from the
world.'
George Russell, 'The Candle of Vision'
During the last two centuries a predominant and
over-arching paradigm defines and characterizes the
world-view of modernism: the myth of Evolution.
'Evolutionism', the doctrine of the progressive oneway emergence of superior forms from primitive
origins, of consciousness from matter, of the greater
from the lesser, pervades modern culture both overtly
and subliminally, consolidating and focussing the
great myth of the forward march of progress born of
the 18th century 'Aufklarung' - in short the serialevolutionary idea is the core-concept of the
'Scientism' which dominates the post-Enlightenment
mindset.

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'That archetypal world is the true

Golden Age, age of Kronos, who is
the Intellectual-Principle as being
the offspring or exuberance of God.
For here is contained all that is
immortal: nothing here but is Divine
Mind; all is God...'
Plotinus

But in the ontological and cosmological teaching of

the Primordial Tradition a different and quite
contrary world-view is articulated, for example in the
Neoplatonic and Cabalistic streams: there the cosmic
cycle of creation is defined by a process of
emanations from the One, of plenary overflow and of
increasingly impure and fugitive reflections devolving
by many stages and removes from a world of
eternally perfect and pure Archetypes, the World of
Light or Mundus Archetypus, the timeless and everpristine Ideas in the Divine Mind. In the
cosmosophy of 'eternal return' (Anakuklosis) which
characterizes for example the Indian notion of the
Yugas and Manvantaras, and of the progressively
coarsening Ages of Gold, Silver, Bronze and Lead
described in Hesiod's 'Theogeny' we can see that the
Age of Gold as the Edenic or paradaisal state
corresponds to the original reign of Saturn and here
we recall the profound teaching of that great master
Plotinus who in his 'Enneads' expounds the esoteric
etymology of Saturn as Kronos interpreted as KorosNous, the 'Abundance of Divine Mind', the pleromic
infinity of the Noetic World which he mystically
equates with the Age of Gold, identical with the
Biblical Eden, the Tep Zepi (First Time) of the

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ancient Egyptians, the Krita-Yuga of Indian lore, the

blissful golden 'morning of the gods' remembered in
many different cultures. As Plotinus says in the 1st
tractate of the 'Fifth Ennead':
'That archetypal world is the true Golden Age, age
of Kronos, who is the Intellectual-Principle as
being the offspring or exuberance of God. For here
is contained all that is immortal: nothing here but
is Divine Mind; all is God; this is the place of
every soul. Here is rest unbroken: for how can that
seek change, in which all is well; what need that
reach to, which holds all within itself; what
increase can that desire, which stands utterly
achieved? All its content, thus, is perfect, that itself
may be perfect throughout, as holding nothing that
is less than the divine, nothing that is less than
intellective.'
The departure from that paradaisal Golden Age
comports the mysterious drama of man's descent
into death, time, materiality and mortality, the
mythos of the Fall: the sucession of the Hesiodic
Ages of Gold, Silver, Bronze and Lead/Iron
likewise epitomize the Spring, Summer, Autumn
and Winter of the Platonic 'Great Year'. Many years
ago during meditations upon the circle the
realisation came to me that the ancient colours of
the directions and seasons preserved in northwestern Europe resumed an alchemical mystery. If
one followed them counter-clockwise from the
north a mystical way of return was expressed which
went 'against the current' and which linked with the
sequential stages of the Great Work of the
Alchemists as described by the medieval adepts of
the Ars Regia.
In the North the black stage of the primal matter as
the Toad bearing the secret jewel within it's head,
the Black Stone and the Crow's Head (Caput
Corvus), the leaden state of fallen time, the Crow's
Wing represented by Blackness. Moving into the
West and the colour Green we come to the stage of
the Peacock's Tail (Cauda Pavonis), a verdant or
polychromatic ferment heralding transmutations.
Passing into the South we see the stage of
'Whitening', or Albification represented by the Lily,
the Hermetick Swan or White Eagle, the
manifestation of the White Tincture. Finally moving
into the East the Alchemist-Magus beholds the
Rubification or 'Reddening' which is symbolised by
the Red Eagle or Phoenix rising from the flames in
regeneration, the Aurora Consurgens. In essence the
alchemical Magnum Opus involves a countermovement or spiral going 'against the current' or
'against the grain' which eventually attains the
sacred centre, the timeless heart of the Unio
Mystica, union with the One. Julius Evola alluded
to this counter-current in the Great Work in repect
of the Hesiodic conception when he wrote that
'resurrection in turn is equivalent to the backward
movement "sub specie interioritatis" through the the
three eras that preceded the "Age of Iron" until we
arrive at the Golden Age of Saturn.' ('The Hermetic
Tradition', ch. 22) Thomas Vaughan in the 17th
century also taught that alchemical transmutation is
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century also taught that alchemical transmutation is

nothing other than spiritual regeneration, the
mystery of Palingenesis via Divine Mind which
Hermes Trismegistus reveals. The backward or
counter-movement is the way of return to the
Archetype: the 'ripening' or 'maturation' of which
the alchemists spoke is not any kind of
'evolutionary' process but a spiritual return Ad
Fontes to the Noetic World of the Golden Age just
as the philosopher-magi of the Renaissance
envisaged, a movement 'against the current' which
paradoxically accelerates the cycle by the magical
power of the Ignis Innaturalis and reverses it in
total transcendence. The exalted teachings of
Hermes Thrice Great make clear reference to this
going 'against the current':
'Suffer not yourselves then to be borne along down
stream by the strong current, but avail yourselves
of a backflow [<lit., "back-current" or "upcurrent">,], those of you who are able to reach the
haven, and cast anchor there, and seek a guide to
lead you to the door of the House of Gnosis. There
you will find the bright Light which is pure from
darkness.' (Libellus VII, Corpus Hermeticum).
In the vertical plane this connotes mystical ascent,
the reversal of the current: just so we find the in
the Gnostic mysteries the cryptic teaching about the
'backward-flowing Jordan' or 'upward-flowing
Jordan'. It is related that when St. John baptised
Christ in the waters of the river Jordan and the
Holy Spirit descended, at that moment the current
of the river was reversed and flowed backwards to
its source, i.e. the current of consciousness, light
and spirit ceased to descend into manifestation in
the lower world of death, sleep, time and mortality
but instead was redeemed, reversed and ascended
upward into the eternal Kingdom of Light: this
comports both a profound arcanum of Gnostic
soteriology and an inner secret of the Erosophy of
the Hermetic initiates.
A related motif is the Manichaean mystery of the
'Column of Glory', termed in Chinese texts from
Central Asia the 'Diamond-Column of Glory'
(Jingang Xiangzhu), through which the Light-Souls
of those redeemed by the Nous are distilled and
drawn up in ascent, rising through the Moon, the
Sun and finally into the Paradise of Light. The
'Diamond-Column of Glory' is called the 'Perfect
Man', recalling the Hermetic Anthropos Teleios,
which we can identify with the same esoteric theme
expressed in the Gnostic concept of the
incorruptible 'Standing One' (Ho Estos) and the
Nordic and Atlanto-Hyperborean Rune 'Man'
signifying the deathless principle of spiritual Life
and Noetic Resurrection. In the Stoicheia of
Graeco-Alexandrian Cabala this symbol is resumed
in the letter Psi, the letter of pure Spirit (Pneuma)
and the Human of Spirit (Pneumatikos).
It is as George Russell wrote: 'I would cry out to
our humanity, sinking deeper into the Iron Age,
that the Golden World is all about us and that
beauty is open to all, and none are shut out from it
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beauty is open to all, and none are shut out from it

who will turn to it and seek for it.'

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