A great whirlwind takes us back in time - not inside a time machine - but on the wings of history - all the way back to pre-Moses times. It is a challenge to dive into different ages of time - for instance the Hellenic period, ca. 600-300 B.C. - at a time of a mixture of spiritually new thoughts and religious worlds. That is Ove von Spaeth (OvS), the Writer and the "Alchemist".

          He is our guide on this wonderful journey to the Mecca of the religious mysteries and to our cultural-religious cradle. His ability to synthesize so many religious, historical and archaeological lines of thought is quite an achievement! - and communicating it to others is an even greater feat! The book appeals to the mystic, the sociologist of religion, the archaeologist, the philologist, and the historian. In order to understand and make something out of the book, a historical-archaeological-theological and philological approach, insight, and knowledge would be recommendable. For a person interested in tracing links and connections and endowed with a curiousity for the origins and background of intellectual and spiritual sciences, here is REALLY something to grasp.


Hidden Messages

If the desire is biblical research and exegesis, the rabbinical writings - Talmud, Midrash, Aggada, the Samaritan texts, royal mythology, religion and anthropology, ancient astronomy and star mythology - this is the book, and it is delightfully written and plotted with enthusiasm and commitment.

          The backdrop is Moses and his possible Egyptian adolescence and knowledge - all that Moses passed on to the Israelites and their descendents - with the Egyptian leads in the rear, together with Egyptian mysticism, magic, and spell. For a person familiar with philology here is a lot of "titbits", because it is the Semite language, the roots of the words, and their possible hidden messages that keeps OvS on the track. The Semite languages - among these Arab, Coptic, Aramean, etc - have all been weaved around the essence of this book - that even the gods rejoice!

          In chapter 6, the section about "Moses - the Mystic", one should have Semite philology on the brain in order to get straight and stick to the many different kinds of ways to spell and comprehend Jahweh, the Jewish God, and this makes me boil over with enthusiasm, in particular because I never met anyone who was interested in the biblical philology in this way - until now!


How Daring - How Wild - How Groovy!

The writing and the conclusions are a pleasure, for instance when it comes to the Aaron and Moses mysteries, the Logos recognitions, the writing in the skies, the 10 Sephirot - (God's emanations), the Zodiac: the sphere of the eighth sky, the hidden biblical ways of reading, the Cabala: the biblical-mysterious science, the background of the origin and use of numerology - where OvS peels it all apart leaving the raw essence clearly and distinctly.

          The Hebrew letter "Alef" (en soph) is being dealt with - every mystic knows that letter and is fascinated by it - and it is consumed in a relaxed way, when OvS explains and gives our imagination free reign about the background, the connection, and the parallelism. In a lot of chapters OvS explains, claims, and sustains by means of the findings and his thoughts about them that one and only one wrote the texts of Moses.

          For instance there is information on the Sirius Cycle (each 1460th year) and about the celestial cosmology, about the wild boar (the Great Bear) and in between OvS takes Moses and Jesus together in the most handsome way as serene guides within "the great teaching" (- and the hidden one). OvS draws a line through questions and thoughts of centuries - for instance about the Trinity in the chapter on celestial-geometrically mysteries. Good thinking! Each chapter is an introduction to a life-long study. One part of the many chapters of the book is headlined "New Platonic and Hermetic Astro-Philosophy" - how daring - how wild - how groovy!!!


Enthusiasm on the Move

To my knowledge, nobody has ever before in Danish published anything like this. For years several foreign writers have published popular scientific literature - but OvS's book is much easier to understand. OvS writes in a light style without excessively long theoretical links - within the religious and historical material. This is knowledge that has unfortunately been met by thundering silence in some circles - maybe because of their occasional lack of documentation.

          OvS's knowledge is synthesizing and concerned. OvS is so obsessed with the Moses mysteries that all through the book it is a thrill to feel his fervour for the subject - no traces of dropping out anywhere. OvS is a historian who dares to use the astronomical, astrological, and mythological concepts all the way to the end and based on his own thinking. OvS is a brave man, whose words will eternally be consolidated in these 5 acts about the "Moses Assassination". The words are carved - not with flames, but with an enthusiasm that pulls. The book will appeal to those obsessed with religious history, and the initiated, and those who want to walk through this (moon node) gate.

C.O.

Ove von Spaeth: Den Hemmelige Religion, Attentatet på Moses, vol. 4,
C.A. Reitzels forlag, Febr. 2004, 367 sider, pris 298 kr.

What is truth? Nietzsche defines truth as "the set of lies which is most free of contradiction". That of course is a sceptical way of defining a scientific truth, however, the fact is that we have no better definitions.
          And definition of truth is - directly and indirectly - what Ove von Spaeth's great work about Moses is dealing with. Of the five volumes, we are strongly exploring volume four, titled "The Secret Religion", in which together with the reader the author reaps what was sowed in the preceding and equally interesting volumes. Ove von Spaeth may be met with pros et cons, however, one fact is imperative, i.e. this author offers us interesting and rewarding reading.
          Which truths can we bring to light from the texts reaching back to events, which took place 3,500 years ago? In the case of Moses - the central figure in the Old Testament - we have a confusion of information of different value and credibility, often even contradicting. How to make choice or refuse, so that the set of the least self-contradicting lies we come up with, can not only be characterized as a result of the "chop off a heel and cut a toe" method?


Knowledge of the initiated brought forward

Ove von Spaeth's method is classical scientific. He puts forward a hypothesis which he by good reasoning may consider to be probable. Subsequently he draws the conclusion of his hypothesis - the theory. And finally he conducts an experiment - explores if the theory may cause more pieces to fit in compared to other and previous hypotheses or assumptions. If this is the case, the experiment can be said to have proved the sustainability of the hypothesis.

          The leading principle of the hypothesis in von Spaeth's work about Moses is that the generally accepted dating of Moses is wrong. Ove von Spaeth has fixed the date of the death of Pharaoh Tuthmosis (III) to be 1455 B.C. - identical to the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt, a central point in the life of Moses.
          Further now, the subsequent theory requires that Moses is made the son of Queen Hatshepsut and Egyptian heir to the throne, but is tricked out by plots, an event becoming the incentive for Moses to a kind of uprising; he leads the Jewish people, carries out the Exodus simultaneously with letting them become bearers of a religion new to them, which, however, in reality is the old Egyptian religion in the core of which Moses as heir to the throne has been initiated, and he is thus passing it on to the world in a new and fruitful way.

          Now - is this sustainable - do the pieces fit? Is the experiment successful? To a reasonably likely degree the answer is positive. No one can certainly ask for more. With his work von Spaeth has brought back one of the great personalities of history from the misty world of myths - to which he has been relegated - now to sheer reality. But during this endeavour the author has also been able to prove a very close connection between the ancient Egyptian perception of the world and a modern perceived realistic initiation psychology, this breathing new life and meaning into the gradually sectarian, petrified Christianity. In fact, via von Spaeth the Moses of 3,500 years ago becomes a life-giving source for modern people.


Theologians' Hostility

Lead by von Spaeth we are not tackling trifles. Indeed, the author has employed all means in order to demonstrate his vision: again to focus on the life-giving source. He blasts rocks or drills passes through them all; at von Spaeth's disposal seems to be all weapons in the shape of a comprehensive knowledge of many otherwise isolated subjects.

          Of course it is the conventional conceptions of Moses and the contents of the Old Testament that von Spaeth has to depart from. And this immediately brings us face to face with something very interesting: the opposition against Ove von Spaeth's work, of which seems to have been quite a lot, stems mainly from theological quarters, and although strongly reduced, these quarters have mainly been mobilized among German-protestant orientated theologians and their local followers. A man like Adolf Harnack, the great, influential German theologian, who hated any idea about a close relation between Christianity, Gnosticism, and Neo-Platonism, would undoubtedly have insisted on von Spaeth being burnt at the stake.


Outstanding Survey

At all times von Spaeth will find his supporters among psychologically and philosophically orientated historians. Nietzsche would have nodded approvingly at von Spaeth's - by the way - outstanding interpretation of Christianity's evolution from primary Christianity, its fall, and its ability to stay alive by means of secretly returning to its Egyptian roots and draw nourishment from that, and how this hidden side of Christianity all of a sudden came into flower as the humanistic movement of the Renaissance. Ove von Spaeth says in photo-negative the same as Nietzsche in Antichrist. And so far also Kierkegaard, where he claims that modern ecclesiastical Christianity is diluted rubbish and being almost the opposite of the original meaning.

          Sigmund Freud would have accepted - as a matter of course - von Spaeth's hypothetical basis, which makes Moses an Egyptian. "The Egyptian factor" as von Spaeth calls it - as being also a fundamental element in living Christianity - would have been acceptable to different history authors such as Oswald Spengler and Egon Friedell. And the close relation between Christianity and Buddhism - it is this relation Wagner deals with in "Parsifal". Obviously, Carl G. Jung would have taken von Spaeth's side. (In Denmark von Spaeth is on wavelengths with Johannes Hohlenberg of the old generation, and to some extent in its own way with Aage Henriksen of a later generation). In today's England a man like Colin Wilson would not feel alienated to von Spaeth's ideas.


Traces and Evidences

And lies and truth - now being the subject. Is it not common sense to believe that the correct description of the source is most likely be the one chronologically closest to the source? And conversely - that you can get so far away from the source that it may be mistaken for a broken drain pipe? When von Spaeth points out the ancient perception of the relation between Judaism, Christianity, and Egyptian ideology, even the most hardcore sceptic must find it obvious that von Spaeth have something important to say.

          Augustine, Philo, Josephus - only to mention a few of the most famous names - are among the many persons that von Spaeth offers the opportunity to tell about Moses and Egypt, about the influence of Moses on Egyptian religious thinking of his time, about the many parallels to Egyptian thinking we find in the Old Testament, as well as corresponding traces in the New Testament. These evidences are simply essential.
          Fathers of the Church, mentioned besides Augustine - and further Plotin's secretary, Porphyrius, and in addition Iamblichus, an entire host, can not all have been people of dreams and wishful thinking. Incidentally, von Spaeth points out that the ancient church understood the Christian faith more as a climax and a synthesis of a number of the other religio-philosophical movements, and that it was only in the following centuries it was tried to present Jesus as a completely new and isolated figure. Prior to that, the inclination was to see great spiritual figures preceding Christ as a kind of forerunners for him - Plato was considered as some kind of a Christian.


Documentation You Can't Escape

The documentation presented here by von Spaeth is hard to escape. Reading von Spaeth - and with just an inferior knowledge of the New Testament, one can not escape listen to the sympathetic resonance of this work. Just think of "Our Lord" - "Thy will be done! In Heaven as on Earth". That is close to Plato's doctrine of ideas in existential form and, thus, absolutely also an idea we see by the ancient Egyptians. And when Jesus is said to say that "the Kingdom of God is within yourself" - can that be reasonably understood in any other way than the mystic-psychological way? And von Spaeth makes the interested reader ask himself from where in heaven's name stems the later fear of concrete nearness of heaven?

          Already in the Old Testament there is a permanent inclination to flinch from the Egyptian-Gnostic Christian core - which incidentally von Spaeth believes is the core of all society-creating religions - he presents a number of examples. Such an example is the Cathar version of the line in "Our Lord", "Give us this day our daily bread". With this Christian direction we find the version "give us this day our spiritual bread". But should not this version be closer to the idea that it is the interior, "the spirit", within ourselves and in Cosmos that we

          We have the same problem with the Sermon on the Mount, the verse "blessed are the poor in spirit", (Luke). As the other gospels do not contain "in spirit" the inclination has been to claim that "in spirit" with Luke has been added by some contemporary anti-Marxist. In support of von Spaeth's observation that there is a general inclination also to repel Moses and the core of his ideology, I want to point out that St. Hieronymus, the first translator of the Old Testament from Hebrew and the New Testament from Greek, indeed translated "our daily bread" to "panis nostrum supersubstantialis" i.e. "our spiritual bread". For did not Hieronymus know what he was talking about? This man - praised and worshipped by August for his firm knowledge of Hebrew, Greek, and Latin.


The Essential Understanding

A central basis of the analysis of his texts is von Spaeth's use of a principle adopted by Max Weber, the sociologist and anthropologist, who calls it "Verstehen", i.e. - the obvious, but rarely observed - that it is not possible to describe a distant culture's habits and rituals without understanding the meaning and the purpose itself. An explorer who wants to describe the rituals of a exotic tribe in connection with calling forth of rain will never be able to describe it correctly unless he understands the purpose of the ritual - the calling forth of rain.

          And by this von Spaeth proceeds into serious minefields - the ancient mystery cults and astrology. Ove von Spaeth simply means that without a knowledge of ancient history's astrological imaginations and the profound idea of many and often strange, cultic rituals, we only understand a fraction of the contents of the Bible, and in any case not at all enough to be aware of the existing relations between the Egyptian, the Jewish, and the Christian worlds. Further, as a red rag in front of modern religio-sociologists, von Spaeth emphasizes that the great religions were not originally a social product, but that civilization, and in general societies capable of surviving, origin from a kind of mysterious, individual experiences provoked by the purpose of the cults.
          In which ever way we turn this over in our minds we can not escape von Spaeth's emphasis on the conditions of practice ruling in ancient times and for a long time ahead. From ancient Egypt via Greece and Rome, with a medieval break, but with a revival during the Renaissance, the entire period was pervaded with cultic and astrological ideas.


Cultic Sky-Inspiration

The actual "The Secret Religion" with the subtitle "Moses and the Egyptian heritage in the past and present" (C.A. Reitzel Publishers), the fourth volume of von Spaeth's series about Moses, is a tour de force in trying to make us read the Old Testament and the New Testament through cultic and astrological glasses. For those who turn sick by the word "astrology" I should like - on my own behalf - to present an explanatory note: constellations of stars should not be - as often done - interpreted as an immediate explanation of events on the individual and general level on our planet. Constellations of stars appear with a cyclic and thus calculated periodicity. For instance such as solar eclipses.

          At different times and in different positions compared to the sun the Earth is influenced by different kinds of more or less important cosmic radiation that is not any news or incomprehensible. Neither that cosmic radiation may be the reason for many explicable and also more inexplicable phenomena on this planet. Of course different kinds of cosmic radiation also can appear with regular periodicity - like for instance the result of sunspots, which can both be measured and often be calculated.
          Therefore, nothing prevents a certain kind of cosmic radiance from appearing simultaneously with a certain constellation of stars. If only the result and not the source of this cosmic radiance is known, and this result appears apparently connected to a certain constellation of stars, there will be a natural inclination to point to this in itself innocent constellation of stars as the reason. The signs of the Zodiac should just be understood as signs or signals. Like the Pavlovian dogs - we make the mistake to believe that the ringing bell is the source of the delicious food. The bell is only signalizing that dinner is served.


Orphic or Osiric Interpretation

The result of cultic rituals need not be explained or "defended". It is a thoroughly studied fact. It is beyond doubt that from ancient times to places on Earth where they still are maintained, the purpose of rituals is ecstasy and some kind of a "higher state". That hallucinatory states may be reached through what we today call sensory deprivation - deprivation of all senses - is no news - on the contrary. If someone is lowered into a tank with lukewarm water for 72 hours or is forced to stay in a closed coffin for 72 hours is in this connection one and the same thing. The cultic rituals have a purpose - they are not absurd tomfoolery.

          When we read in an official Scandinavian church policy called the Augsburg Confession - about God's only begotten Son, who was executed by Pontius Pilate, spent three days in the kingdom of the dead, only to finally resurrect, and ascend into Heaven - it will be pure rubbish to a person of today of sound mind. If, however, the text is interpreted Orphic or perhaps Osiric, i.e. cultic-ritual, it is about achieving a higher or different state of mind through complete isolation from external influences.


A Fascinating World Opens Up

In this the fourth volume of his great work von Spaeth makes us read through astrological-cultic symbolizing glasses, and it is both very exciting and often very amusing.
          We know that the concealed is always interesting, but it is not for entertaining reasons that mystery cults are being surrounded by a huge and at times impenetrable wall of secrecy. One of the explanations is, of course, the danger of vulgarization, causing evaporation of the psychical excitement necessary to achieve the concrete results, i.e. some kind of ecstasy. In the same way von Spaeth explains Moses' ban against images of God. What is supposed to be an introvert and spiritual matter is made reified by images and will draw the mind off its focus.

          Another reason for keeping secret the mystery cults is probably that preparations of the mystic initiation were often rituals directed against liberation from conventional strings attached to society. Also rites using sex and bloodshed cannot be public. That rites have often very drastic forms is beyond doubt. In some cases they have had such a form that nobody felt inclined to describe them. In "A Poet's Bazaar" Hans Christian Andersen mentions an initiating ritual ceremony with the "Turkish dervishes"; having described the beginning of the performance he discontinue by saying, "the following was of a kind not suitable for the paper".

          But now, read the volume (four) concerned - "The Secret Religion" - of the series "Assassinating Moses". Reading this volume makes you at once want to read the three preceding volumes again. This summary of the volume four is only referring to a fraction of the subjects that von Spaeth is dealing with - if not to say scrutinizes. A fascinating world opens up under his magnifying glass.

J.M.          Rio de Janeiro, 24 November 2004

Info:  Ove von Spaeth: "The Secret Religion; Moses and the Egyptian Heritage in the Past and Present", 367 pages, illustr., DKK 295,-, C.A. Reitzel Publishers, 2004 (p.t. in Danish only).


(The essayist/reviewer, Jurij Moskvitin, M.A. in philosophy, mathematician, concert pianist, film music compositor, and author (Jurij Moskvitin"s "Essay on the Origin of Thought", Ohio University Press, 1974, was soon established as a true classic); he has formerly been a reviewer for the Copenhagen newspaper "Politiken" and occasionally for the Danish national television).

(Jurij Moskvitin has, 24.Nov.2004, given OvS. permission to use this article)