‘Hidden Wisdom’ rendered in plain sight

  

He’s still on the road, in Canada now. Bro. Tim Wallace-Murphy is on a speaking tour, promoting his new book titled Hidden Wisdom: Secrets of the Western Esoteric Tradition. He had been in New Jersey and New York these past few days, drawing more than 100 Masons to Atlas-Pythagoras Lodge Friday night, and following that triumph the next day with an intimate afternoon at the Theosophical Society’s Quest Bookshop in Manhattan, and his final stop in the area at the Chancellor Robert R. Livingston Masonic Library at the Grand Lodge of New York last night. You’d never guess he’s 80 years old.


It’s the prolific author’s 12th book, and while it covers material quite familiar to his regular readers, what I take to be the point of Hidden Wisdom is not ancient Egypt or the Israel of antiquity or medieval Europe or any point in history, but is the future. Our future.


To be sure, the author writes for new fans, and indeed leads a tour beginning... well, at the beginning of esoteric thought, namely the cave paintings in France depicting shamanistic ritual believed to be more than 10,000 years old. From there, hidden wisdom evolves. Neolithic spirituality, Egyptian temples, Israelite covenant, the Greeks, the Romans, the Celts, the Grail, the Templars, the Renaissance, the Masons, and many more points of interest are made.


But it is the book’s conclusion that gives us pause because it could be understood as an urgent warning from one who has lived long and seen much. Wallace-Murphy exhorts us to “live our beliefs and turn our world around. For if our world cannot be transformed into a global, just and equitable society, stripped of violence, greed and poverty, why should it survive? We have the spiritual answers to our problems in the hidden wisdom of the ancient sages and mystics. The real question is: Have we the wit, the humility and the courage to apply them?”