Source: “Hidden Wisdom: Secrets Of The Western Esoteric Tradition”, By Tim Wallace-Murphy, The Disinformation Company Ltd., 2010.
The Age Of ExplorationAnd Two Revollutions That Changed The World.wav
This podcast examines the historical Age of Exploration and the Industrial and French Revolutions, arguing that these periods were marked by European expansion driven by greed and a sense of cultural and religious superiority. The text highlights the brutal destruction of native cultures and peoples in the Americas and Africa, often justified by dehumanizing religious or secular beliefs. It contrasts this with the profound spirituality of indigenous populations and the resistance to European influence shown by established Asian cultures, ultimately suggesting that these revolutions, despite their advancements, led to spiritual alienation and environmental destruction.
Topic 1: The European Age of Exploration and Colonization Methods
The European Age of Exploration, beginning in the late fifteenth century, marked a significant period of expansion and subsequent exploitation of newly discovered lands. This era was fueled by a complex mix of motivations including sheer greed, population pressures, immense curiosity, and a degree of evangelical enthusiasm. It evolved into a competitive race among European traders and explorers who, despite taking different geographical routes, employed remarkably similar methods to achieve their objectives. The cruelty, greed, and intolerance witnessed during the earlier Crusades are noted as formative experiences that preceded this explosion of exploration. Knowledge gained during early attempts to convert Africans was later predominantly used to establish and maintain the slave trade. The imperial adventure became characterized by rapacious greed and intellectual and racial arrogance, leading to genocide and cultural destruction.
Topic 2: Role of Christianity and Religious Missions in Exploration
Religious motivation played a part, particularly in territories occupied by the Spanish and Portuguese, where missionary work was taken most seriously. Although each expedition had a clear commitment to converting the "heathen," profit remained the primary motive. Missionary work was largely undertaken by religious orders like Franciscans and Dominicans, initially acting under royal orders, with Jesuits playing a later important role. The motivation for evangelism itself was mixed; the clergy were driven by religious zeal, authorities sought a docile and subservient labor force, and settlers desired the security of religious uniformity. Conversion was intrinsically linked with conquest, where indigenous populations were brutally told their gods had failed because the Europeans had won. The secular clergy, exemplified by figures like Juan de Zumárraga, the first bishop of Mexico, engaged in brutal campaigns to destroy native cults, culture, and religion, attempting to erase all signs of pre-Christian beliefs. This destruction included temples and idols, earning some individuals a reputation as major destroyers of antiquities. In contrast, a Franciscan like Bernardino de Sahagún adopted a more scholarly approach, seeking to understand native culture and beliefs to facilitate conversion and absorption into the colonial system, creating a comprehensive twelve-volume study of life in New Spain. Early Protestants in Northern Europe initially focused on converting other Christians rather than pagans, a tendency that persists in some fundamentalist sects. However, pious and fanatical Protestants in England, often seamen and traders, felt a strong compulsion to proselytize, leading to missionary efforts in North America primarily left in secular hands, where conversions tended to serve commercial interests. The early European ideal of a fully Christian state was pursued in North America by groups like the Puritans, although their fanaticism hindered tolerance and effective evangelism, leading to the suppression of dissenters and destruction of alien enemies, reflecting patterns seen in the Old World. Despite the religious ideals professed, the attitude towards slavery among Protestant colonists was similar to that of Spanish Catholics, viewing Black people as a separate, inferior species without rights to instruction or sacraments, reinforcing this view with biblical justifications. It was not until the nineteenth century that large-scale, organized missionary work by European or American Protestants began, though natives were still held in contempt and their cultures derided, intertwining evangelical efforts with colonialism and fostering suspicion among native populations. The white colonizers, supposedly guided by Christian precepts, persecuted and betrayed native peoples while describing them as "savage," highlighting a stark contrast with the intense spirituality and respect for nature observed among indigenous populations, which the colonizers lacked.
Topic 3: Destruction and Genocide of Native Cultures and Peoples in the Americas
The Age of Exploration led to the systematic destruction of native cultures and peoples in the Americas. The Spanish Conquistadors concluded that Native peoples did not have souls, which justified their enslavement or murder. This dehumanizing perspective was rooted in the theology being propagated by institutionalized churches. Within one hundred years of the European invasion, the loss of population among Native American peoples amounted to genocide. Estimates suggest the population plummeted from seventy-five to eighty million to between ten and twelve million. The population of the West Indies was almost completely wiped out, with one island's native population reduced to merely twenty-four households. This scale of loss, in the context of the total world population at the time, is described as exceeding even the Nazi Holocaust in scale and brutal effect. Beyond the direct violence and disease, established societal structures were dismantled. In the Andean highlands, complex, ecologically aware agricultural systems based on sophisticated irrigation, developed over a thousand years before the conquest and reaching a peak under the Inca Empire, were ruthlessly destroyed by the Spanish in their pursuit of gold. The emperor was captured, held for ransom, and then murdered, leading to the fragmentation of the society. The remnants were reorganized along Spanish lines, with native populations forced into new villages and towns as unwilling servants or slaves. European crops were introduced. Many survivors fled to marginal lands to avoid slavery in mines and enforced serfdom on farms. In North America, the destruction of the Indian population was slow and systematic, involving the theft of lands, betrayal through broken treaties, war, deliberate infection with diseases like smallpox, and forced relocation to reservations, which are described as large concentration camps. Native American cultural values and spirituality were derided as inferior by the colonizers.
Topic 4: Exploitation of Africa and the Slave Trade
Early European contact with Africa, starting with attempts at conversion around 1444, provided knowledge of the continent and its peoples that was later almost exclusively used to establish and maintain the slave trade. The slave trade became a foundational element for the economies of Spanish America, the West Indies, and the Southern United States, also contributing to wealth creation in England. The new colonial economies required a constant supply of cheap and reliable labor, which, while partly met by indentured labor or convicts, was primarily satisfied through slavery. A triangular trade system rapidly developed: cheap goods were sent to Africa and exchanged for slaves, who were then transported under conditions of extreme brutality to the Americas, sold, and the ships returned to England with goods like cotton and tobacco. This commerce in human misery significantly boosted the fortunes of cities like Bristol. The West Coast of Africa was particularly exploited as a source of slaves. The reinstitution of slavery with Black slaves from West Africa became the solution to the labor shortage caused by the genocide of Native American populations. As slavery had disappeared from European society earlier for economic rather than theological reasons, its reintroduction reportedly caused no qualms of conscience for Christians of any denomination, only logistical challenges of supply and demand, which the new capitalist trade systems efficiently resolved. Later colonization of Africa led to further destruction of native cultures and spirituality, viewing Africans as savages to be subdued or children to be disciplined. The continent was treated as a source of raw materials, a market, and a political plaything for European empires, leading to cruel exploitation and practices like apartheid. Even after independence, economic and political domination persisted through economic aid and the international credit system.
Topic 5: Indigenous Spirituality and Knowledge Systems
The source contrasts European materialistic and often brutal approaches with the deep spirituality and knowledge systems of indigenous peoples in the Americas and Africa. Native American peoples, including their descendants, are described as having intense and deep spirituality, instinctively, deliberately, and consciously seeking spiritual guidance and living in vibrant harmony with the land and its creatures. They perceived the spiritual nature of every aspect of creation, a form of spirituality noted as common to hunter-gatherer societies. Quotes attributed to Native Americans express a profound connection to the earth, seeing it as sacred and as their mother, with components like trees and water embodying memories and voices of ancestors. They understand their interconnectedness with the earth and its creatures, fearing that the destruction of animals would lead to human loneliness and death because whatever happens to the beasts soon happens to man. This perspective is rooted in the belief that the spirits of all things inhabit a "real world" that is the source of the visible one, and that the Great Spirit is within all things, including nature and people. Similarly, African natives possessed significant knowledge. The Bantu in South Africa were aware that the Earth revolved around the Sun long before Galileo, possibly due to a spiritual humility that assumed their planet was not the universe's center. Their spiritual humility also allowed them to learn secrets of herbal medicine from animals, possessing cures for ailments for which Western medicine still lacks answers, such as gallstones and kidney stones. Even the seemingly primitive Bushmen of the Kalahari are described as the most intelligent and talented race in Africa, possessing sophisticated knowledge of seasons, weather, and herbal medicines, poisons, and antidotes that still baffle modern scientists. They developed a calendar and used intricate knowledge of nature for survival, recording history through rock paintings. Despite this depth of knowledge and spirituality, European colonists made no attempt to understand native cultures, instead regarding them as inferior.