1938, imagine this ...

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To reconstruct (as best we can) how any book was conceived we 'put ourselves in the author's shoes'. There are -- let us say -- no surviving drafts, no workbooks nor outlines. So we look at what else they wrote, who they studied with in prior years, any correspondence or literary recollections from the period. Admittedly, such meagre scraps are hardly an account of the mental process and complexities of writing a 400pp book.

Given certain facts, what do we then imagine the Author(s) thought or intent, behind the published artifact itself?

We can say w/ certainty the Author is a German emigre PhD, a refugee from Nazi Germany and a Jewish intellectual formerly from an elite Berlin circle now dispersed across a darkening Western world. They are devoted to Classical History, but not to the old theories of anglophone or American academia. On the contrary, his teachers of the Religionsgeschichtliche Schule had boldly synthesized Egyptian, Jewish, Persian and Greek elements: a new framework must be created to reflect upon history, to recreate what was or what might have been.

Then -- quite unexpectedly -- a novel assignment was given by his boss at the behest of the Rockefeller Foundation. Quid pro quo, a massive grant was offered in exchange for writing a book in short order. It quickly became clear this was a special project for John D. Rockefeller Jr., the ultimate financial supporter of our Author (among several hundred other refugee scholars) for the previous 4 years after the Rockefeller funded visa arrangement.

A satisfactory effort for the RF would probably guarantee a choice professorship (it did), but everything must be done Anonymously (it was). But what should he write? Something on First Century Christianity, they want, but Not Too Jewish. In 1938, the issue of Mandate Palestine was intensely political, and this project could be no excuse to openly attack Herr Hitler. At that time, there were some believing the USA would not survive Nazism. A Rockefeller agent (also German) was a liason and assistant -- to make sure this didn't get out of hand, turn political, and to record firsthand accounts of the subjects.

How do you write all this -- as an escaped Jew, yes -- while your people faced a promised erasure (or at least, as an existential target) according to the evil doctrine of Nazism? Almost anything preserving silence seems absurdly trivial, offensive. So how could an intellectual 'detourne' this knotty predicament by writing a book on salvation?

Compose cryptically. Write about philosophical 'Jews' who disappeared, plausibly deniable as Jews (Sethians) -- or maybe not even Jews, merely Hermeticists who only sounded Jewish. On a different subject of similar period and place, Lion Feuchtwanger grappled with this very troubling duality. Present such a cover-story (historical variants) while sketching the future organization as a sleeping Golem, unknowing its own Creator and Semitic origin? This resurrectionist cult, borrowing Jacob's Ladder to practice (Jewish) anagogy, would express a mystical Judaism invisible, unidentifiable to believers. If scholars like E.R. Goodenough couldn't be more precise or convincing, who would even suspect or read the hints of a 1st C Jewish mystery cult? What's a Gnostic, anyway?

Let's suppose -- to put a very fine point on it -- that Philo's Aletheian Anthropoi were (mostly) Sethians, an alternative cult which 'disappeared': went underground or pretended towards Christianity. That a Pythagorean colony of Therapeutae (soul healers) wrote hermetically, for a much larger community of 'Gnosis-seekers' in the Diaspora c.15 AD, to suggest an occult (Mosaic) message: Escape Egypt, while you still can! That you will inevitably face a generation wandering, tested by circumstances and the peril of relapse, remain sober unto God: dry as the desert.

In late adulthood, Philo Judaeus joined a cult of Jeremiah. Were his sober Rechabites ancestors of the water-drinking Sethians/Therapeutae?

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K.Jaspers' work is not fully translated into English and some of his minor ideas yet remain obscure.  One minor Jasperian trope which needs further elaboration by Existentialist scholars is the Cone, a geometric form easily visualized by average readers but left unexplained by the German philosopher.  Is the Cone a metaphoric phenomenon, an intellectual force-principle, a concentrating idea? From the dearth of literary evidence I've examined, only tentative conclusions are suggested. Furthermore, the Cone concept seems connected to Jaspers' famous Cipher; therefore, it IS significant and must have been explained to his German students of the Late-1920s in greater detail. At Heidelberg, Ludwig Edelstein chose Professor Karl Jaspers as his Ph.D. advisor, so it would be no surprise to see examples of Jasperian influence in Edelstein's work a decade later. Then the obvious question arises: can we find the Jasperian 'Cone' -- as a symbol, metaphor or cipher -- in the Anonymous Authors' 1938 work?

In AA (1939) the Jasperian cipher is revealed at least twice: a) 'Wall Street' (representing Capitalism, Greed, the Roaring Twenties, Bill's obsession, etc.) is "the Maelstrom" (an alcoholic symbol, in Baltimore writer E.A. Poe's work), and b) the Alcoholic, in his manifest Typhonic chaos, is "a Tornado" (direct literary allusion to the semi-autobiographical protagonist in Tender is the Night "like the tornado who had hurried through the old red buildings of Hopkins": Phipps Clinic patient and famous Baltimore alcoholic, F. Scott Fitzgerald). The A.A. Fellowship, as a "widening circle...on earth" follows this Theme also. Therefore, given such blatant examples, we would seek to understand the meaning(s) of Jaspers' Cone and how Edelstein esoterically deploys this mysterious Symbol as a Sober antithesis to the Alcoholic 'Cone of Destruction.'

Within the Egyptian context (in light of the cliché that 'the Jews built the Pyramids'), the Architectural Theme confirms the Program as an occult endeavour to build a celestial platform for Pharoah's people (i.e. Rockefeller's redeemed ex-drunks) to reach the Heavens. Like a reconstructed Chaldaean Ziggurat, the Anonymous Authors' Program is a modern (German-Jewish/Existentialist) abstraction for Jacob's Ladder, Genesis 28:10-17.

If mindful, we can easily grasp how this is profoundly significant to the A. A. in other, related tropes. 'Mixing cement' in an Hermetic-alchemical formulation is really the combining of personalities (i.e. souls) in Fellowship. 'Building an Arch' is basic organizational activity -- trained workers realizing noetic forms out of simple limestone blocks (i.e. Plinthine's Jews, constructing Pharoah's fortresses) -- which symbolizes the metaphysical work of Chaldaean Asaphim, whose sky-bridge (i.e. the Milky Way) was alternately conceived as a Serpent, Arch or Ladder. Now we begin see how the Edelsteins' "Bridge of Reason" expanded and reinterpreted Jaspers' Cone cipher, spotlighting a very specific and peculiar historico-cultural context, to explain the derivative and descendant Aletheian Anthropoi (A. A. = Sons of God) of Philo Judaeus. Much like their ancestors who built Pharaoah's epic sky-temples, the A. A. who "visioned the Great Reality" express what Israel ('those who see God') does best: revealing the course or passage god-ward. **Likewise, Enoch (Hebrews 11:5) was "translated" (μετετέθη = transitioned, changed) or uplifted to Heaven; this was based on mystical Sethian dogma, it is instructional Judeo-Egyptian palingenesis or Judeo-Hermetic metempsychosis.**

It is no more complicated than this: in 1938, the Edelsteins re-created and elaborated expressions of First Century Alexandrian Jewish Mysticism, yet they did so partly from a psychiatric-philosophic (Jasperian Existentialist) framework learned at Heidelberg c.1928.

Philosophie: II. Existenzerhellung [1932],p.202:

Situationen hängen zusammen, wenn sie auseinander hervorgehen. Ich bin Situationszusammenhängen unterworfen, deren Kegeln erst wissenschaftliche Forschung bewußt macht; diese werden nie ganz bewußt, weil das Bewußtsein von ihnen die Situation und damit jene Kegeln selbst wieder ändert, indem es als ein neuer Faktor in die Situationsgestaltung eintritt.

Situations are related when they arise apart. I am subject to situational contexts, only scientific research makes me aware of this cone. I never become completely conscious these contexts, because the awareness of them changes the situation and thus, those cones themselves, again, by entering as a new factor shaping the situation.

Beyond one example or context, we can find Jaspers using this term in his other works as far back as 1922. In 1938, Jaspers was using 'Cone' as synonym for organizing perspective or principled focus. See K. Jaspers, Existenzphilosophie: Drei Vorlesungen gehalten am Freien Deutschen Hochstift in Frankfurt A.M. 1937 [1938], p.35:

Alternately, we tend to the prejudices that absolutize an encompassing: thus Dasein: as if the life-promoting thing were the last and could take itself absolutely; thus consciousness in general, the mind: as if in the properly conscious the being itself were to be taken into possession and not only a perspective, - a cone of light into the darkness {ein Lichtkegel in das Dunkel},- was taken within the comprehensive Real-Being; thus the spirit: as if the idea were real and sufficient for itself; thus existence: as if a selfhood could be enough for itself, while it comes from the other precisely to the extent that it is itself and sees itself pointed to the other. In the isolation of a single sense of truth, truth can no longer remain truth.

Felix Müller's period dictionary, Mathematisches Vokabularium, Deutsch-Französisch [1900], p.254 very clearly defines a Kegel-perspective as "a conical or centralizing perspective"; certainly, the Jasperian Kegel is a "cone".

Metrological phenomena of both the Whirlpool and Cyclone Funnel are typically symbolized as cones, familiar mental images from the basic text:

Maelstrom/Whirlpool:

Tornado/Cyclone:



A comparison of the Pyramid and Cone Forms:



K Jaspers, Einführung in die Philosophie [1936], p.?

Wenn das Sein als Ausgelegtsein begriffen ist , so scheint auf dieselbe Weise getrennt werden zu müssen : Auslegung legt etwas aus;
unserer Auslegung steht das Ausgelegte, das Sein selber gegenüber. Aber diese Trennung gelingt nicht. Denn es bleibt für uns nichts Bestehendes, geradezu Wißbares, das nur ausgelegt würde und nicht selber schon Auslegung wäre. Was immer wir wissen, es ist nur ein Lichtkegel unseres Auslegens in das Sein oder das Ergreifen einer Auslegungsmöglichkeit. Das Sein im Ganzen muß so beschaffen sein, daß es alle diese Auslegungen für uns ins Unabsehbare ermöglicht. Aber die Auslegung ist nicht willkürlich. Sie ist als richtige von einem objektiven Charakter. Das Sein erzwingt diese Auslegungen. Alle Seinsweisen für uns sind zwar weisen des Bedeutens, aber doch auch Weisen notwendigen Bedeutens. Die Kategorienlehre als die Lehre von den Strukturen des Seins entwirft daher die Seinsweisen als Bedeutungsweisen, zum Beispiel als Kategorien des Gegenständlichen «in Identität, Beziehung, Grund und Folge oder als usw. Alles Sein in seinem Bedeuten ist für uns wie eine nach allen Seiten sich erweiternde Spiegelung. ...

If being is understood as being interpreted, then it seems to have to be separated in the same way: Interpretation interprets something; our interpretation is confronted with the interpreted, being itself. But this separation does not succeed. For there remains for us nothing that exists, nothing that is knowable, that would only be interpreted and would not itself already be interpretation. Whatever we know, it is only a cone of light of our interpretation into being or the grasping of a possibility of interpretation. Being as a whole must be such that it makes possible for us all these interpretations into the incalculable. But the interpretation is not arbitrary. It is of an objective character as a correct one. Being forces these interpretations. All ways of being for us are indeed ways of meaning, but nevertheless also ways of necessary meaning. The category theory as the doctrine of the structures of being therefore designs modes of being as modes of signification, for example as categories of the objective "in identity, relation, or as reason and consequence, etc." All being in its signifying is for us like a reflection expanding in all directions. ...

Additional examples.
See K. Jaspers, Die geistige Situation der Zeit [1922] p.:

Nach der Entzauberung der Welt, welche erst recht den Staat in den Lichtkegel von Frage und Wissenwollen brachte, erlaubt es die geistige Lage der Gegenwart jedem, in diesen Raum des menschlichen Gesamtdaseins einzutreten.

After the disenchantment of the world, which even more so the State is brought into the light-cone of questioning and of a desire for knowing, the intellectual situation of the present allows everyone to enter this space of total human existence.

Translated poorly in Man in the Modern Age [1949], p.90:

Now that the charm has been dispelled which first brought the State into the light-pencil of questioning and of the desire for knowledge, the contemporary mental situation enables every one to enter this region of human community life. To every one the dreadfulness of the world of human activity in the domain of State reality will appear in its full inexorability.

Now -- since the Jasperian 'Cone' is a cipher (a complex metaphor, w/ varied meanings) for that organizing principle of PERSPECTIVE or FOCUS -- we can understand that related terms like Outlook, Attention, Direction, etc. may indeed possess some Jasperian nuance. For example, p.33: "If you draw this fallacious reasoning to the attention of an alcoholic..." p.102: "his attention should be drawn to you as a person who has recovered." Personally, I find this material 'merely' the dull psychiatric cover for the more fascinating directions to Judeo-Hermetic (Nazorean?) anagogy and henosis. (In any case, I wouldn't credit the Big Book's Judaic Hermeticism to Jaspers' theory, though I may be too dismissive on this point.)

Dr. Karl Jaspers was not only a Philosophy professor; he was a practicing psychiatrist who treated alcoholics and wrote a book on Psychopaths.

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An important summary of Dr. John Rathbone Oliver's work under Dr. Adolf Meyer, during 1917-1919, here.

The Anonymous Doctor was actually a "Number #1 psychiatrist," a best-selling author and a long-time beneficiary of Rockefeller money ... see his 1943 Obituary in Time Magazine here. Detailed text analysis here.

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Ludwig Edelstein was a philologist, but also a philosopher and historian. He was a Member of the History of Ideas Club, among famous Johns Hopkins colleagues like Biblical archeologist W.F. Albright. Edelstein's friendship with Albright is known from surviving correspondence, but a more important connection is established in a kind a dialogue w/ Albright's theory we indirectly see revealed in Edelstein's 1938 project. This answers the question "Who is God in the Big Book?"

From that period, 1934-8, W.F. Albright's published papers and books reveal an exceedingly close inspection of the Caanite-Egyptian God, Horon=Baal Zeboul.

"The Syro-Mesopotamian God Šulmán-Ešmún and Related Figures." Afo 7 [1931-32] pp.164-69.
“New Light on Early Canaanite Language and Literature.” BASOR 46 [1932], pp.15–20.
"The North-Canaanite Epic of 'Al'èyân-Ba'al and Môt", JPOS 12 [1932], pp.185-208.
"More Light on the Canaanite Epic of 'Al'êyân-Ba'al and Mot", BASOR 50 [1933] pp.13-20.
"The North-Canaanite Poems of 'Al'èyân-Ba'al and the Gracious Gods", JPOS 14 [1934], pp.101-140.
The Archaeology of Palestine and the Bible (The Richards lectures at the University of Virginia. [1931]) 3rd Ed. [1935].
"Zabûl Yam and Thâpit Nahar in the Combat between Ba'al and the Sea", JPOS 16 [1936], pp.17-21.
"The Canaanite God Hauron (Horon)", AJSL [1936], pp.1-12.
"New Canaanite Historical and Mythological Data", BASOR 63 [Oct.1936], pp.23-32.
"Recent Progress in North-Canaanite Research', BASOR 70 [1938], pp.18–24.
“Was the Patriarch Terah a Canaanite Moon-god?", BASOR 71 [1938], pp.35–40.
...
"The Egypto-Canaanite God Hauron", BASOR 84 [1941], pp.7-12 .
"Anath and the Dragon", BASOR 84 [1941], pp.14-17.

It would appear our Edelsteins cleverly masked a line of argumentation (that Jesus was a Nazorean descended from Egyptian Sethians, that Semitic Therapeutae represented an alternative, highly syncretistic Ophitic cult traced in the OT, etc.) in silent dialogue w/ Albright's period theories about "Elyon Baal". The unfamiliar occult god of the Big Book -- Creator of tornados and floods, the Drowning Man's God -- is indicated as the same Great Power behind Jesus: Horon.

Although the first edition appeared in 1942, W.F. Albright's Archaeology and the Religion of Israel was being written in 1938 and therefore its theory was highly topical to the Edelsteins' intellectual community (and Club, at Hopkins) at that time. Albright tells us that Hauron was the Semitic storm god of cyclones and waterspouts, maelstroms, {the Queer Twist} floods, etc., represented as Healer-god Eshmun and associated with Destroyer-god Resheph. In conjunction with Anat he would appear to be Semite Yahu's Son (Herem, the God who must die and be reborn?), and as Phoenician 'Melqart' he would be both Baal Haddad's Son and 'Herakles' (as Phoenicio-Libyan Herakles is resurrected by a Young God, Horus-Harpokrates-Eshmun). Prince of the City, Horon was Philistine Baal-Zeboul: a cosmopolitan god. For the Proto-Jews, Adoni-Zedek and Melqi-Zedek also confirm Jerusalem as Horon's city under a Philistine authority (this may explain Jerusalem's absence from the Pentateuch) -- loser god Horon was very consciously replaced in the OT c.300 BC. Much of this material was only 'discovered' (summarized) in the 1930s: it was still a hot topic among Classicists and historians of Semitic religion in 1938. So who did the Edelsteins pick for the god of their Big Book, written at Johns Hopkins?

See W.F. Albright's Archaeology and the Religion of Israel [1942/1953], p.80

Similarly, the mighty storm-god was also the dying and reviving deity, whether in the name of Al'iyân Baal (at Ugarit), of Hadad-Rimmon (at Megiddo), or of 'my lord,' Adoni (Greek Adonis), at Byblus and in Cyprus. In no religion of antiquity was there such a strong tendency to bring opposites together as in Canaanite and Phoenician belief and practice.

We cannot illustrate the problems that face us any better than to sketch the material now at our disposal for the reconstruction of the beliefs about the god Hauron (originally Haurân, whence Hôrân and Haurôn).28 This god appears as an Asiatic divinity in three different Egyptian sources: on a number of faience plaques from the Fifteenth Century; on a statue of the young pharaoh as the god Hauron from the early Thirteenth Century; in several passages in the Magical Papyrus Harris. The monumental representations identify the god consistently with Horns, while the magical papyrus calls him "the valiant shepherd,” who protects his worshippers from wild beasts. Here he is associated with Anath. At Ugarit Hauron appears, c.1400 B.C., in association with Astarte. In a Phoenician incantation from Arslan Tash, dating to the Seventh Century B.C., Hauron is mentioned with Baal and said to have a number of wives; his chief consort is given the appellation "whose utterance is true.” Finally, on a Greek inscription from Delos in the Aegean, about the Third Century B.C., Hauron (Hauronas) is invoked, along with Herakles, by men of Jamnia in the land of the Philistines. Moreover, the name of the god appears in Canaanite personal and place-names (Beth-horon, etc.) from c.1900 to c.600 B.C. Yet the existence of this deity in the Canaanite pantheon was unknown until some ten years ago! The interpretation of the name is obscure, but the most likely rendering is ”the one belonging to the depths,” i.e., god of the underworld. In this case his figure was closely related to that of Resheph. His close association with Herakles at Jamnia suggests that he was the god who was adopted by the Tyrians as their chief deity, under the name of Melqart (Phoenician Milk-qart, "King of the City,” i. e., of the underworld, which was called "the city,” in Ugaritic, just as in Akkadian).29 Since Melqart was called "Herakles” by Greeks and Romans, this suggestion is entirely reasonable. The god of the underworld was at the same time a chthonic deity, that is, he was lord of the ground and of its productive faculties. So we can scarcely be surprised to find that the annual festival of the resurrection of Melqart was celebrated in the early spring at Tyre.

The Chronos god in 3-Persons described by Philo Judaeus c.35 AD should be the God Concept of a significant group (older cult) of Jews also contemporary to the Alexandrian Jewish theosopher. The relevance of Philo's explication would testify to the group's existence and philosophy, which Philo tried to harmonize judaistically if somewhat obscurely. Albright had not made this explicit connection, but the 'forms of Horon' which Albright identified adequately matches the lineage which Philo sketched.

If we insist Chronos/Horon must be a Time-God, (though he was not in Philo of Byblos), Time-Lord Melchizedek may be the connection.

1. Father God: Hadad ................... Horon 1 ....... Chronos 1
2. Consort: Astarte /// Anat
3. First Son: Melqart/Herakles ..... Horon 2 ....... Chronos 2
4. Second Son: Eshmun ............... Horon 3 ........ Chronos 3

Atthesametime,influentialadvocatesofdedicatedtreatmentpro- gramsdidexist.Forexample,famedJohnsHopkinspsychiatrist AdolfMeyersaid:"The most dependable means available (for alcoholism treatment) are asylums for drunkards with more or less efficient provisions for aftercare, insisting on total abstinence during the period of physical and character reconstruction."(Meyer,1932). Meyer'sthinkingacme)rdswelwithcurenttheoriesoftreatmentin mostregards,excevLhisviewthatthealcoholic'scharactermustbe reconstructeduringtreatmenttobringhismoralsenseandcharac- terbackuptonormallevels..
"The greatest advantage lies with treatment that can be voluntary and, at the same time, has a strict and final goal as far as abstinence goes. The intermediate measures are dependent on many uncontrollable factors of individual and individual and group assets or prejudices. We lack in our country the very beginnings of the necessary information as to the most effective procedures from the individual and the social points of view. Any effective modification of the alcohol situation has to include a public conscience, as well as a group and individual conscience, on the part of the rank and file of the participants, ... By conscience in this sense we imply the range of consideration and of concern, the range of what the person or the group is able to pay attention to grasp in moments of emergency, as well as in leisure, for consideration of bearings and importance of the situation. It is not merely an issue of right and wrong, of righteousness and sin. Responsible interest and consideration is what is referred to in the above use of the concept of conscience.

In certain ethnological and religious developments seem to be features that do for entire tribes or races what the Occidental is apt to seek in the effects of alcohol. Those religions which prohibit the use of alcohol successfully, or guard it for religious ceremonies, might possibly lead the way to the discovery or recognition of common links which attain the same satisfactions and contain the same controls. It is not only the Mohammedan and the Mormon - or the Oriental who tends toward contemplation (and opiates). With the Jews, the wine serves as a symbol rather than as something acting with increasing quantity likely to produce intoxication. ...
What means are at our disposal? Is alcohol a solution to existing difficulties? Is it compatible with the complexities of modern life? Do we have to get what is needed in a chemical form? Or in some other form of adjustment? In some spirituality, or tangible ideals and goals? In constructive vision? By some panacea, or in a blending of resources and outlook based on freedom and discipline, freedom and solidarity?

The dominating feeling today seems to be that the freedom to drink is the great issue in the alcohol problem. Thirty or forty years ago it was the freedom not to have to drink that had to be fought for. In many social circles this is






...
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