René Guénon's vision of the fantastic lost kingdom of Agarttha
According to some esoteric authors such as Saint-Yves d'Alveydre (Mission de l'Inde, 1910) and Ferdinand Ossendowski (Bêtes, Hommes et Dieux, 1921), there would be an underground kingdom, located specifically in the interior of Central Asia, inhabited by human beings that have not been well identified or perhaps by a lineage parallel to us humans, who would be the treasurer of the original knowledge of the world.
This kingdom, called Agarttha (the inviolable one), would have the city of Shamballa as its capital and Brahmatma (or king of the world) as its king, assisted by two viceroys: Mahatma and Mahanga.
The Agarttha tradition dates back mainly to the philosophy of Tibetan Buddhism, but its echoes would also be found in other Asian religions.
Also the occultist Helena Blavatsky (1831-1891) pointed out that Agarttha was the original kingdom where the ancient traditions from the creation of the world to us would have been hidden. King Brahmatma would then be treasurer of supreme knowledge, intermediary between God and human beings.
The person who most searched for the location of the mysterious Agarttha was the Armenian esotericist GI Gurdjieff (1866-1949). In 1885, at the age of only 19, Gurdjieff was already in Constantinople, deepening his knowledge of Sufism. We later find him in the Middle East, studying esoteric Christianity and the tradition of the Essenes.
From 1887 to 1907, Gurdjieff traveled continuously through Egypt, Iraq and Central Asia. He was part of a group of people who called themselves “the seekers of truth.” It seems that around 1900 he managed to contact some monks belonging to the “Sarmoung Confraternity” in a monastery located in the Hindu Kush mountains of northern Afghanistan. In 1907 he found himself in Tashkent, where he served in a hospital, curing drug addicts and alcoholics.
But what really was the “Sarmoung Confraternity?”
According to some ancient traditions, the monks belonging to this congregation possessed knowledge prior to the great flood. Then they would have assumed the function of the Ark (with the symbolism of the rainbow), or, alternatively, that of transmitting and transporting the mystery of our origin through the flood and other upheavals that occurred over the centuries.
The fact that the capital of Agarttha, Shamballa, is, according to some traditions, located in the bowels of the Hindu Kush mountain range, suggests that Gurdjieff's objective was not only to deepen the knowledge of the “Sarmoung Confraternity”, but also to enter the legendary kingdom of Agarttha.
We don't know if he succeeded.
In any case, he then headed to Moscow and France, where he began to elaborate his teachings on the acquisition of harmony, which he called the “Fourth Way.”
The approach of the French philosopher René Guénon (1886-1951) to the concept of Agarttha is different.
First of all, Guénon indicates that traditions regarding a hypothetical underground kingdom are found in various civilizations on Earth. According to him, these traditions must be linked to the “symbolism of the cave” and, therefore, to that of the Heart, which par excellence is the receptacle of blood, the center of the Human Being and the Universe.
Guénon points out that also in the Hebrew tradition there is the indication of a mysterious city called “Light” (Genesis, XXVIII, 19). Near the entrance to the underground city “Light” there is a tree that symbolizes Life and Knowledge, like the two trees in the Garden.
For Guénon, the title of “King of the World” forces us to go back to Vedic traditions with Manu, the primordial legislator, as well as to myths of the ancient Egyptians with Menes or the Greeks with Minos.
This title, for the French philosopher, does not designate a real person or entity, but rather refers to a principle, which functions as a transit between the transcendent world and the material world. For this purpose we remember the title of “pontiff” or “builder of bridges”, following a genuinely Masonic term, which indicates the one who mediates between the supersensible world and the material.
Furthermore, Guénon points out that in the Middle Ages there was a search for a pure kingdom from a Christian point of view, where the original traditions were kept intact: it was the search for the legendary kingdom of Prester John, sometimes located precisely in Central Asia and other times in present-day Ethiopia.
René Guénon's meticulous study of the traditions of Central Asian symbolism leads to the recognition of the three entities that lead Agarttha: Brahmatma, Mahatma and Mahanga.
For Guénon, those are nothing more than the Three Wise Men of the Gospel and Saint-Yves d'Alveydre himself says that the Three Wise Men came from Agarttha.
Behold then, Mahanga offers gold to Christ and greets him as King; The Mahatma offers him incense and recognizes him as a Priest; the Brahmatma offers Christ myrrh (evoking incorruptibility or Vedic soma) and designates him as Spiritual Master.
Then the key to Guénon's thought begins to be outlined: for him, Agarttha is the equivalent of the Garden in Vedic, but also Hindu and Buddhist traditions.
Garden or Center of the World, therefore “cave” where traditions are hidden, Heart.
Just as the Garden became inaccessible to man, which became stained with sin, Agarttha is inaccessible to men, but it is there where the original traditions and the secret of our origin and our creation remained intact.
Returning to the title “King of the World,” Guénon also notes that in Jewish tradition, Melchizedek is considered king and priest at the same time. His name means “king of justice,” but he is also considered the “king of Salem” or “king of peace.” These two attributes are also those of the “King of the World”, that is, of Brahmatma.
Guénon, with acute wisdom, notes that Melchizedek combines the three functions of the Magi into one: in effect, he is remembered as Adoni-Tsedek, “Lord of Justice”, Kohen-Tsedek, “Priest of Justice” and Finally, Melki-Tsedek, “King of Justice”, and these three aspects (which also evoke the concept of the Trinity) can be considered as the functions of Brahmatma, Mahatma and Mahanga.
The syncretist Guénon points out that, according to Tibetan traditions, Agarttha was called “Paradesha” at the beginning of the Kali-Yuga era. In Sanskrit, Paradesha means “supreme region” or center of the world. This word was later used by the Chaldeans (Pardes) and by Europeans (Paradise).
In conclusion, for René Guénon, Agarttha is not a real place and it is, therefore, useless to go looking for it. There are, however, significant similarities between the different religions and philosophical currents that refer to spiritual centers, more or less hidden and inaccessible.
According to Guénon, the only explanation is that the analogy between these different interpretations derives from the emanations of a very ancient center of worship and primordial knowledge, from which the different religions later developed.
YURI LEVERATTO
