Pervasive throughout the Eastern Mediterranean and Western Asia until late antiquity and beyond, Greek mágos “magian” was influenced by (and eventually displaced) Greek goēs, the older word for a practitioner of magic, to include astrology, alchemy and other forms of esoteric knowledge. This association was in turn the product of the Hellenistic fascination for (Pseudo-)Zoroaster, who was perceived by the Greeks to be the “Chaldean” “founder” of the Magi and “inventor” of both astrology and magic. Among the skeptical thinkers of the period, the term ‘magian’ acquired a negative connotation and was associated with tricksters and conjurers. This pejorative meaning survives in the words “magic” and “magician”.

In English, the term “magi” is most commonly used in reference to the Gospel of Matthew’s “wise men from the East”, or “three wise men” (though that number does not actually appear in Matthew’s account, and various sources placed the number anywhere between two and twelve). The plural “magi” entered the English language around 1200, in reference to the Biblical magi of Matthew 2:1. The singular appears considerably later, in the late 14th century, when it was borrowed from Old French in the meaning magician together with magic.

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‘Nullius in verba’ was chosen to accompany the arms given to the Society by Charles II in the second charter
of 1663. John Evelyn had sketched a variety of possible ‘Armes and
mottoes proposed for ye Royal Society, 1660′, which included the motto
eventually chosen and still used today. Designs which failed to make
the final cut included a vessel under sail with the motto ‘Et augebitur
scientia’, a hand issuing from clouds holding a plumb-line with the
motto ‘Omnia probate’ (1 Thess. 5.21), two telescopes extended in
saltire with earth and planets, motto ‘Quantum nescimus!’, and a shield
bearing the sun in its splendour inscribed ‘Ad majorem lumen’, plus on
one side of the shield ‘Quis dicere falsum audeat?’. A final design, a
shield charged with terrestrial globe and human eye, is headed ‘Rerum
cognoscere causas’ from Virgil’s Georgics, alongside which is the word
‘Experiendo’ and a repetition of ‘Nullius in verba’. All were rejected,
with the exception of the latter, and the arms were entered into the
official volume, ‘Royal Concessions in the College of Arms’, approved
by the King on 22 April 1663 and entered into the record by Elias
Ashmole on 30 June 1663.

Ac ne forte roges, quo me duce, quo lare tuter,
Nullius addictus iurare in verba magistri.
(Horace, Epistles I.i, 1.13-14)

You shall not ask for whom I fight
Nor in what school my peace I find;
I say no master has the right
To swear me to obedience blind.
(trans. C.T. Carr)

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Prince Henry the Navigator was the third child of King John I of Portugal, the founder of the Aviz dynasty, and of Philippa of Lancaster, the daughter of John of Gaunt. Henry encouraged his father to conquer Ceuta (1415), the Muslim port on the North African coast across the Straits of Gibraltar from the Iberian peninsula, with profound consequences on Henry’s worldview: Henry became aware of the profit possibilities in the Saharan trade routes that terminated there and became fascinated with Africa in general; he was most intrigued by the Christian legend of Prester John and the expansion of Portuguese trade.

It is a common conception that Henry gathered at his Vila on the Sagres peninsula a school of navigators and map-makers. He did employ some cartographers to help him chart the coast of Mauritania in the wake of voyages he sent there, but for the rest there was no center of navigational science or any supposed observatory in the modern sense of the word, nor was there an organized navigational center. In “Crónica da Guiné” Henry is described as a person with no luxuries, not avaricious, speaking with soft words and calm gestures, a man of many virtues that never allowed any poor person leave his presence empty handed.

Resources and income

On May 25, 1420, Henry gained appointment as the governor of the very rich Order of Christ, the Portuguese successor to the Knights Templar, which had its headquarters at Tomar. Henry would hold this position for the remainder of his life, and the order was an important source of funds for Henry’s ambitious plans, especially his persistent attempts to conquer the Canary Islands, that the Portuguese claimed having discovered before the year 1346.

Henry also had other resources. When John I died, Henry’s eldest brother, Duarte became head of the castles council, and granted Henry a “Royal Flush” of all profits from trading within the areas he discovered as well as the sole right to authorize expeditions beyond Cape Bojador. He also held various valuable monopolies on resources in the Algarve. When Duarte died eight years later, Henry supported his brother Pedro for the regency during Afonso V of Portugal’s minority, and in return received a confirmation of this levy. Henry also promoted the colonization of the Azores during Pedro’s regency (1439–1448).

Until Henry’s time, Cape Bojador remained the most southerly point known to Europeans on the unpromising desert coast of Africa, although the Periplus of the Carthaginian Hanno the Navigator described a journey farther south about 2,000 years earlier.

As a second fruit of this work João Gonçalves Zarco, Bartolomeu Perestrelo and Tristão Vaz Teixeira rediscovered the Madeira Islands in 1420, and at Henry’s instigation Portuguese settlers colonized the islands.

In 1427, one of Henry’s navigators, probably Gonçalo Velho, discovered the Azores. Portugal soon colonized these islands in 1430.

Gil Eanes, the commander of one of Henry’s expeditions, became the first European known to pass Cape Bojador in 1434. This was a breakthrough as it was considered close to the end of the world, with difficult currents that did not encourage commercial enterprise.

Henry and the navigators in the monument to the Portuguese discoveries, Lisbon

Henry also continued his involvement in events closer to home. In 1431 he donated houses for the Estudo Geral to reunite all the sciences — grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, music and astronomy — into what would later become the University of Lisbon. For other subjects like medicine or philosophy, he ordered that each room should be decorated according to each subject that was being taught.

He functioned as a primary organizer of the Portuguese expedition to Tangier in 1437. This proved a disastrous failure; Henry’s younger brother Fernando was given as a hostage to guarantee that the Portuguese would fulfill the terms of the peace agreement that had been made with Çala Ben Çala. The agreement was first broken by the Moors, who attacked the Portuguese and captured the Portuguese wounded when they were being carried to the ships, killing those who tried to resist. The Archbishop of Braga and the count of Arraiolos refused to approve the terms in the reunion of the Portuguese Cortes, thus condemning Fernando to remain in miserable captivity until his death eleven years later. Henry for most of his last twenty-three years concentrated on his exploration activities, or on Portuguese court politics.

Henry’s tomb in the Monastery of Batalha.

Using the new ship type, the expeditions then pushed onwards. Nuno Tristão and Antão Gonçalves reached Cape Blanco in 1441. The Portuguese sighted the Bay of Arguin in 1443 and built an important fort there around the year 1448. Dinis Dias soon came across the Senegal River and rounded the peninsula of Cap-Vert in 1444. By this stage the explorers had passed the southern boundary of the desert, and from then on Henry had one of his wishes fulfilled: the Portuguese had circumvented the Muslim land-based trade routes across the western Sahara Desert, and slaves and gold began arriving in Portugal. By 1452, the influx of gold permitted the minting of Portugal’s first gold cruzado coins. A cruzado was equal to 400 reis at the time. From 1444 to 1446, as many as forty vessels sailed from Lagos on Henry’s behalf, and the first private mercantile expeditions began.

Alvise Cadamosto explored the Atlantic coast of Africa and discovered several islands of the Cape Verde archipelago between 1455 and 1456. In his first voyage, which started on March 22 1455, he visited the Madeira Islands and the Canary Islands. On the second voyage, in 1456, Cadamosto became the first European to reach the Cape Verde Islands. António Noli later claimed the credit. By 1462, the Portuguese had explored the coast of Africa as far as present-day nation Sierra Leone. Twenty-eight years later, Bartolomeu Dias (can be spelt Diaz) proved that Africa could be circumnavigated when he reached the southern tip of the continent. This is now known as the “Cape of Good Hope.” In 1498, Vasco da Gama was the first sailor to travel from Portugal to India.

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_the_Navigator

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(Russian: Елена Петровна Ган, also Hélène, 12 August [O.S. 31 July] 1831, Yekaterinoslav, Ukraine, Russian Empire — May 8, 1891, London), better known as Helena Blavatsky (Russian: Елена Блаватская) or Madame Blavatsky, born Helena von Hahn, was a founder of Theosophy and the Theosophical Society.

It was in 1873 that she emigrated to New York City. Impressing people with her psychic abilities, she was spurred on to continue her mediumship. Mediumship (among other psychical and spiritual sciences of the time), based upon the quasi-religion known as Spiritualism having began at Rochester, NY, was a widely popular and fast-spreading field upon which Blavatsky based her career.^[3]

Throughout her career she claimed to have demonstrated physical and mental psychic feats which included levitation, clairvoyance, out-of-body projection, telepathy, and clairaudience. Another claim of hers was materialization, that is, producing physical objects out of nothing, though in general, her interests were more in the area of ‘theory’ and ‘laws’ rather than demonstration.

In 1874 at the farm of the Eddy Brothers, Helena met Henry Steel Olcott, a lawyer, agricultural expert, and journalist who covered the Spiritualist phenomena. Soon they were working together in the “Lamasery” (alternate spelling: “Lamastery”) where her book Isis Unveiled was written.

Madame Blavatsky wrote that all religions were both true in their inner teachings and problematic or imperfect in their external conventional manifestations. Her writings connecting esoteric spiritual knowledge with new science may be considered to be the first instance of what is now called New Age thinking. In fact, many researchers feel that much of New Age thought started with Blavatsky.

She also lived in Philadelphia for part of 1875, where she resided at 3420 Sansom Street, now home of the White Dog Cafe. While living on Sansom Street, Madame Blavatsky became ill with an infected leg. She claimed to have undergone a “transformation” during her illness which inspired her to found the Theosophical Society. In a letter dated June 12, 1875, she described her recovery, explaining that she dismissed the doctors and surgeons who threatened amputation. She is quoted as saying “Fancy my leg going to the spirit land before me!,” and had a white dog sleep across her leg by night.

To India

She had moved to India, landing at Bombay on 16 February 1879, where she first made the acquaintance of A.P. Sinnett. In his book Occult World he describes how she stayed at his home in Allahabad for six weeks that year, and again the following year.

Sometime around December 1880, while at a dinner party with a group including A.O. Hume and his wife, she is claimed to have been instrumental in causing the materialization of Mrs. Hume’s lost brooch.

By 1882 the Theosophical Society became an international organization, and it was at this time that she moved the headquarters to Adyar near Chennai, India (then known as Madras).

The society headquartered here for some time, but she later went to Germany for a while, in between she stayed at Ostend (15 July 1886 – 1 May 1887) where she could easily meet her English friends. She wrote a big part of the Secret Doctrine in Ostend ^[9] and there she claimed a revelation during an illness telling her to continue the book at any cost. Finally she went to England.

A disciple put her up in her own house in England and it was here that she lived until the end of her life.

Final years

In August, 1890 she formed the “Inner Circle” of 12 disciples: “Countess Constance Wachtmeister, Mrs Isabel Cooper-Oakley, Miss Emily Kislingbury, Miss Laura Cooper, Mrs Annie Besant, Mrs Alice Cleather, Dr Archibald Keightley, Herbert Coryn, Claude Wright, G.R.S. Mead, E.T. Sturdy, and Walter Old”.^[10]

Suffering from heart disease, rheumatism, Bright’s disease, and complications from influenza, Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky died at 19 Avenue Road, St Johns Wood,^[11] the home she shared, in England on May 8, 1891.

Her last words in regard to her work were: “Keep the link unbroken! Do not let my last incarnation be a failure.”

Her body was cremated; one third of her ashes were sent to Europe, one third with William Quan Judge to the United States, and one third to India where her ashes were scattered in the Ganges River. May 8 is celebrated by Theosophists, and it is called White Lotus Day.

She was succeeded as head of one branch of the Theosophical Society by her protégé, Annie Besant. Her friend, W.Q. Judge, headed the American Section.

Influences

Blavatsky was influenced by the following authors:

• Helene Fadeev, her mother
• William Blake
• Edward Bulwer-Lytton
• Louis Jacolliot
• Paschal Beverly Randolph

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One of the first to catch my attention was the Invisible College, a precursor of the Royal Society; It consisted of a group of scientists including Robert Boyle, John Wilkins, John Wallis, John Evelyn, Robert Hooke, Christopher Wren and William Petty. In letters in 1646 and 1647, Boyle refers to “our invisible college” or “our philosophical college”. The society’s common theme was to acquire knowledge through experimental investigation.

The idea of an invisible college became influential in seventeenth century Europe, in particular, in the form of a network of savants or intellectuals exchanging ideas (by post, as it would have been understood at the time). This is an alternative model to that of the learned journal, dominant in the nineteenth century. The invisible college idea is exemplified by the network of astronomers, professors, mathematicians, and natural philosophers in 16th century Europe. Men such as Johannes Kepler, Georg Joachim Rheticus, John Dee and Tycho Brahe passed information and ideas to each other in an invisible college. One of the most common methods used to communicate was through marginalia, annotations written in personal copies of books that were loaned, given, or sold from person to person. (Wikipedia)

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