When we consider Freemasonry and Rosicrucianism, we are often led to Hermeticism and the Kabbalah, as well as Christian mysticism, as being the historical foundations of our tradition. Yet there is also a mystical and religious stream whose influence is harder to trace, less well-documented, and more ephemeral: the religion of the Manichees.
Manichaeism has become something of a cliche in the West. Most scholars use the adjective Manichean to refer to philosophies which are dualist, and indeed a conflict between good and evil does stand at the root of Mani’s religion. However, this is also the case with Persian religion more generally. The reception of Manichaeism in the West has been conducted at several levels of temporal and material remove, and has lead to a highly cliched picture of Persian mysticism, a persistent error which the scholar John Walbridge has called “Platonic Orientalism,” particularly in the context of the reception of the ishraqi (or illuminist, a direct translation of both the Persian and the Arabic) theosophy of Suhrawardi (Walbridge, 2001). This is the belief, begun by Platonist mystics, in an ancient wisdom preserved by Persian Zoroastrian magi. Yet it must be stressed that Zoroastrianism and Manichaeism are two very different religions which emerge from extremely different historical contexts.
Before tracing out this context, it will be helpful to review the history of Manichaeism in the West, in order to understand its relevance to Freemasonry and Rosicrucianism. In the 13th century in the south of France, a peculiar heresy known as Catharism emerged. This heresy was by and large a resurgence of the Manichaen religion. Manichaeism was not unknown to the Catholic church, most famously because Saint Augustine had been a practicing Manichaen for some time before converting to Christianity and writing polemics against the religion. The Cathar heresy was transmitted to France by the Bogomils[1] of Bulgaria, and was put down by the Church in a bloody war known as the Albigensian Crusade, a crusade against infidels in the South of France.
Yet a few generations after this crusade the Knights Templar were burned at the stake. The King of France at the time was perhaps concerned that the Templars would seize land in the South of France and establish a monastic state similar to the nascent state of Prussia founded by the Knights of the Teutonic Order. In any case, the Templars were burned.
But several things conspired to associate the Templars with Manichaeism. The physical proximity of most of the Templar lands to the region where Manichaeism had broken out, combined with the charge of heresy leveled against the Templars, as well as the generally Islamic or “Eastern” nature of the Templar’s perceived heresies — exacerbated by an association with Shia esotericism, which has persisted in analogies made between the Templars and the Assassins. All this led to the Templars being associated with the generally “Eastern” religion of Manichaeism.
At least, that is what Abbe Barruel (1798) accused the Templars of being after the French Revolution, although his insistence was that the Freemasons had continued the spiritual legacy of the Templars. To Barruel, a Jesuit, this was evidence that a Manichaen heresy had continued within Templarism and been passed to the Freemasons, which connected the nascent liberalism of the French Revolution to a vast history of heresy, making it a suitable polemic for the Catholic Church to reassert its control after the uncertainties of the 18th century. In this context were the links between Templarism, Freemasonry and Manichaeism woven in the eyes of the general public, and this impression continues to this day.
Yet in an interesting link, the Manichaeism of the 14th century may have had a genuine historical link to the roots of Rosicrucianism in the form of the Brethren of the Free Spirit, a group of Christian Mystics whose heretical ideas were also being persecuted by the Church. Within the middle ages, and especially in the 12th century, Islamicate ideas or motifs, particularly emulating Sufi Persian poetry, were especially popular in literature ranging from troubadour songs to Arthurian romances. And this stream was a prominent one among the many who influenced the Beguines who began the tradition of German mysticism, certainly Marguerite Porete, who was tried for heresy by the same lawyer as tried the Templars – indeed, Porete was burned at the stake to establish a legal precedent for the persecution of the Templars (Sells, 1994).
Suffice it to say, there was a link between Manichaeism and the tradition of German mysticism that would form the central crucible within which Rosicrucian mysticism was forged. The links between Johannes Tauler and Jacob Boheme, for instance, typifies this. So is this why mystics often insist on the Manichaen nature of some Rosicrucian beliefs? Is there a Manichaen link to the Christian Theosophy of Jacob Bohme?
Surely that is absurd. And what on Earth is Manichaeism, actually? Many people in the West throw the word around without being sure what it means. Some tradition, vaguely Persian in nature. But who were the Manichaens? What did they believe? And where did they come from.
To understand that, we have to understand the life of a specific Prophet – similar to the Prophet Mohammad, but from a few centuries earlier. He came from a sect of Jewish Christians, and preached a message so powerful it founded a new religion that eventually would stretch from China to the South of France. We must understand the prophet Mani.
Mani was born into a community of what we would now call Mandaens: Jewish Christians who revere John the Baptist (Fontanelle, 2022). The word Mandaen is actually a perfect Aramaic translation of the Greek word “gnostic.” The Mandaens are the last surviving gnostics from antiquity, and today they live near Basra in Southern Iraq. Or, they did until very recently, when the 2003 US Invasion of Iraq displaced so many Mandaeans that a significant proportion of the community relocated to Canada and the United States. Mandaeans believe in a series of light worlds which emanate out from the source to the creator. Their Christian lineage begins with John the Baptist, and as their beliefs are tolerated but taxed under jiziya in Islam, they have been permitted to continue existing for all these centuries.
So Mani came from one of these communities, or a proto-Mandaen version of this tradition in the 3rd century A.D. He was born in Ctesiphon, then seat of the Persian Empire. We have already navigated to a religious climate which will be remote to most Christian Westerners, but I now must introduce some new religious terms.
One of them is Zoroastrianism, the ancient religion of the Iranian people, and perhaps the most significant religion ever to emerge in the globe. It is significant because it seems to exist simultaneously in the tradition of the revealed religions as it does in the natural religions, possessing traits which mediate between the two. One of these is the nature of the Avesta, their holy book, which has verses that are linguistically related to, and sometimes sharing exact passages of the Rig Veda from ancient Hinduism (Sarianidi, 2003). The other is the dualist, rather than polytheist nature of the religion, possessing two main gods, Ahura Mazda, the source of all good, and Angra Mainyu, the source of all evil. These two gods were all that constituted the religion, and yet interestingly enough it was accepted by Christians as being similar to their religion, and a serious rival to the power of Christian Rome. But also, after the emergence of Islam, this religion was tolerated under the jiziya, the Islamic Religious poll tax, and allowed to continue for a long time in Persia, although immense social pressure emerged to convert to Islam in order to gain power in the bureaucracy of the Caliphate. Thus the Zoroastrians dwindled, and today are a tiny remnant community of Parsis in Mumbai, and a few in Yazd in Iran. You will find many Parsees in the United States and Canada among the diaspora, and they are a proud people.
Many concepts in this paper may be offensive to practicing Zoroastrians, and it is perhaps riddled with inaccuracies. Nevertheless, at the risk of Platonic Orientalism, I will continue this brief sketch.
At the time when Mani was born in Ctesiphon, Zoroastrianism was at its most powerful. It was the state religion of the Sassanid Empire in Persia, the Persian Empire resurgent fter overthrowing the Greek yoke in the wake of the conquest by Alexander the Great. Persia was back on the scene as a world power, and it had its dualist world religion to match its might. It was a serious rival with Christianity as a state religion with power that could regulate the world, although it existed solely within a Persian sphere of influence.
Mani received a mystical revelation and began to preach his message of light. He was born in the Persian capital of Ctesiphon but raised in the much more refined, ecclesiastically tolerant city of Babylon, whose immense cultural roots and long religious history left it very powerful at that time. His father’s family of Jewish Christians were what we today might refer to as Mandaens. They had a particular kind of gnostic beliefs. Mani received a vision at the age of 12, reportedly traveled to India to study Hinduism and Buddhism, and returned to preach his message to the King of Persia. Luckily, the King was Sharpur the 1st, a highly tolerant Zoroastrian King, who did not take the tenets of Zoroastrianism to punish paganism so seriously. He was willing to tolerate many other religions, as wide ranging as Hinduism and Christianity. This is due to the presence of the popularity of a Zoroastrian heresy known as Zurvanism, which was competing for influence in the Zoroastrian court.
The Zurvanite strand of Zoroastrian religion was concerned with the worship of the god Zurvan, or the god of infinite time, who was conceived of as the androgynous father of the twins Ahura Mazda and Angra Mainyu. Thus he represented a transcendent principle beyond the dualist principle of good and evil. The Zurvanite strand became popular and represented a monist revival among the Zoroastrian priesthood which was more tolerant of pagan polytheist religions such as Hinduism. This lead to Shapur I’s acceptance of Mani’s religion.
Thus, in order to convey their gnostic principles, the Manichaens translated many of their spiritual principles into Zoroastrian form. They used the popularity of Zurvanism to convey the monist nature of their underlying teachings with a dualist form of an outer religion, conceiving of an angel of absolute light and one of absolute darkness in similarity with the Zoroastrian gods Ahura Mazda and Angra Mainyu. This is what creates Manichaenism’s “dualism” and also its supposed “Persianness.” In ultimate origin it is a survival of a Jewish Christian gnosticism from Late Antiquity, but it was influenced by the dominant Zoroastrianism of the time, the more tolerant Zurvanite variety of the reign of Shapur I. In later years, when more orthodox Zoroastrianism re-emerged in power, Manichaeism was highly persecuted, later finding refuge in only one part of the world: Central Asia.
The identity of Zurvan is curious. Some claim he is a genuinely Indo-Aryan deity, stretching back from the nomadic prehistory of those people on the Eurasian steppes, when they domesticated the horse and created the chariot. Others think he was from a Babylonian, or Mesopotamian influence on Zoroastrianism. Still others speculate that he is a pre-Zoroastrian deity from further east, from an ancient pre-Indo Iranian civilization located in Central Asia (Zaehner, 1972).
It is this particular theory to which I hold. I have sought to understand Zurvan’s origin in the iconography of an ancient civilization located along the Oxus River, a civilization discovered by the Greek-Soviet archaeologist Sarianidi (1990), who put this civilization on the map for archaeology in the 1970s. This ancient civilization appears to have had some hand in forming the crucible of Zoroastrianism, and might be the place from which Zurvan emerged. As a not very qualified etymologist, never having put too much diligent study in the comparative method, my brief survey of the data showed that most of the etymologies linking the god Zurvan to Sanskrit cognates in Indian religion appeared to be spurious – it is not cognate with the Sanskrit sarva. As such, I see no reason to suppose an Indo-Aryan origin for Zurvanism; although it is certain that Zurvanism emerged from within Zoroastrianism proper, it could just as easily be a survival from this pre-Zoroastrian Bactrian civilization.
Thus there is some chance that Zurvanism emerged from an ancient central Asian tradition which predated the arrival of the Aryans from the steppes. Regardless, it was the comparative tolerance of this sect of the Zoroastrian priesthood which allowed the religion of Mani to thrive. Thus even in its Zoroastrian tendencies, Manichaeism is Zurvanite in those tendencies, positing a unifying transcendent principle which unites the angels of light and the angels of darkness. In practice there is a more complex theosophy behind this, so this is a bit more subtle and certainly more moral than Nietzsche’s beyond good and evil. This often involves a complete rejection of the evil, in order to reflect the good which exists in the ideal world. Yet Manichaeism thrived in China, central Asia, Persia and even entered Europe in the form of the Albigensian heresy, and in the strangely Persian character of the Holy Grail in Arthurian Legends – which is often compared to the mythical seven-ringed cup of Jamshad which allowed him to perceive all of space and time (Campbell, 2019).
Manichaeism was in the waters which lead to the mystical traditions behind Rosicrucianism – meaning regular, good old Lutheran Christian mysticism, the kind you will find in your local Lutheran church. Indeed, the pre-Raphaelite painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1834) even went so far as to imply that the entirety of Luther’s Protestant Reformation was in fact founded on a Manichaen influence. Viewed from the perspective of German Mysticism, as a tradition stretching from Eckhart and through Bohme to the radical Pietists of the 17th century and the Pietists of our own day, this is a tempting association. There clearly was a Manichaen influence on Marguerite Porete’s book The Romance of the Rose, a mystical text which influenced Meister Eckhart. (De Lorris, 2023) This was the tradition on which Luther drew to define his church.
Is Manichaeism everywhere? Surely not. And, no, it’s not, in practice. Very few genuinely Manichean ideas persist in Christian culture or even in most Rosicrucian orders. And yet the idea of Manichaeism persists, a Manichaen imaginary. This Manichaeism is highly Persianate, and smacks of a certain kind of orientalist fascination with Sufism without necessarily engaging with the Arabic or Farsi languages or Sufi literature and Persian poetry. It’s a Manichaeism which is similar to the “Platonic Orientalism” we heard about before. It applies here to the way the Manichaen imaginary – a Manichaeism which identified itself with the heresy of the Cathars and filtered through Rosicrucianism – was perceived. It may not resemble much the historical Manichaeism, but especially in some of the esoteric teachings, there definitely seemed to be some Manichaen practices and beliefs. How, no one is entirely sure. It’s almost like elements of Persian culture just emerged independently in Germany. As though some similar tradition was passed down. But no one, even in those Rosicrucian Orders who do identify with the Cathars and Persia, seems to know.
So why is it important that I tell this convoluted and contradictory history of Manichaeism, a history that comes from the “Secret History” of the world – the history of all those who have woken up to the light and walked the path? (Corbin, 1998) It is true that there is something different in Rosicrucianism, and that is the Hermetic tradition and theosophical alchemy, which are often the primary thing that one associates with Rosicrucianism. In fact, Rosicrucianism seems to emerge historically when these two traditions, the Hermetic from Renaissance Italy, and the Manichaen from 14th century German Mysticism, meet.
Hermeticism also offers a religion which mediates between monotheism and polytheism, but conceived from a different perspective from Mani. That perspective is that of Egyptian pagan priests adapting their teachings to both Greek philosophy but also Jewish scripture and even a Zoroastrian influence. The Egyptians had to show how their Monist beliefs were also in harmony with all Monotheist teachings. Manichaeism also comes from a similar theosophical and theological stance, in that its Monist beliefs are in harmony with a Zoroastrian external religion. But the Manichaens would translate their monist gnosticism into other religious modes as well, eventually putting their religion in Chinese terms which would communicate it to Confucians, Taoists and Mengzists. Thus Manichaeism is rather similar to Hermeticism in its ability to mediate, but Hermeticism is committed to an ultimately polytheist context for their gnosticism, while Manichaeism emerges from a Jewish-Christian gnostic school. Thus Hermeticism remains a more radical tradition in that it would unite monotheists and theists alike in a very interesting spiritual union. The only question is how. This is what Egyptologist Jan Assmann (1997) called “abolishing the Mosaic distinction,” or the polemic which castigates some religions as being true monotheist religions, or “the Revealed Religions,” and the false idolatrous religions, or “the Natural Religions” — polytheist ones which held the gods to be immanent with Nature. (Assmann, 2014)
This unique ability of Hermeticism is not quite as pronounced in Manichaeism, which ultimately still operates within the context of solely the revealed religions, the religions of the book. Yet we must ask whether that is a feature of Persian religion more generally? Indeed, some scholars claim that Achaemenid Persian Zoroastrianism had a significant influence on the formation of Jewish Theology in Yahwism, leading to the somewhat puzzling idea that the first Monotheist religion may in fact have been Dualist in origin, and that this peculiar strain in religious mode — that of revelation — first emerged with the teachings of the prophet Zoroaster, and not Moses (Ibid). But then it was not independently invented by Moses. It was perhaps directly inherited by Mosaic Law.
This is very curious but I want to close with one even stranger story, and it is about the future. Some of you may know of the emergence of a new Persian religion two hundred years ago, one which holds Zoroaster as the first in a long line of prophets which includes Jesus, the Buddha and Mohammad. That religion is the Bahai tradition. The Baha’is believe that their prophet, the Bah’ullah, who emerged in the 19th century, has completed Islam and ushered in a new revelation. Among their teachings are the unity of all religions, and the absolute concordance of teachings between Zoroastriansim, Buddhism, Hinduism and Christianity, Judaism and Islam. Indeed, they even include natural religions like Native American religion in this tradition. Although they interestingly do not recognize Mani as a prophet.
In any event, the Baha’is preach a panentheistic religion whose teachings are sometimes very similar to Rosicrucianism, particularly where science is concerned. I have sat in Bahai prayers meetings and discussions of their scriptures, and they tolerate me there although I am a Christian, and I have found their style of prayer to be very similar to Pietist groups and Christian prayer meetings generally, although of a highly mystical variety, although some of it is in the Persian language, the language the sacred texts are written in.
Thus, interestingly, from a Persian Sufi context a new religion has emerged which almost seems to answer Rosicrucianism’s conflation of Manichaeism mystical practices with Hermeticism by conflating Western Hermetic teachings with Manichaeism, completing an ancient cycle of energy and teachings being passed from East to West. But perhaps all this is just Platonic Orientalism. What it means I am not sure, but I expect that the god Zurvan remains somewhere in the Ether, and when the name Baphomet is spoken by enthusiasts, perhaps it is Zurvan who answers.
On behalf of our Pansophers community. We would like to thank the author, who wishes to remain anonymous, for this excellent contribution!
Sources Cited
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Assmann, Jan. Religio duplex: how the Enlightenment reinvented Egyptian religion. John Wiley & Sons, 2014.
Barruel, Augustin. Memoirs, illustrating the History of Jacobinism. Vol. 2. translator, 1798.
Campbell, Joseph. Parzival: A Tale with Many Tellings. Directed by Joseph Campbell Foundation, 2019. YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BN_NWTV2liA.
Corbin, Henry. Alone with the Alone: Creative Imagination in the Ṣūfism of Ibn ʻarabī. Vol. 149. Princeton University Press, 1998.
De Lorris, Guillaume, and Jean De Meun. The romance of the rose. Princeton University Press, 2023.
Fontainelle, Earl. “Episode 155: Charles Häberl on the Mandæans”. Secret History of Western Esotericism Podcast. Retrieved at: <https://shwep.net/podcast/charles-haberl-on-the-mandaeans/>. 2022
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[1] Connected to the Bogomils are a mysterious sect known as the Athinganoi, a heretical Manichaen group who followed Jewish law. This sect emerged from Bactria and Greek India and have often been confused from the Roma, who would emerge from the same region a few centuries later. Historical lines between the Athinganoi and the Roma are often blurred, but from this hazy association many orientalist ideas about the Roma, Catharism, and Manichaeism in general can be inferred.
