* Sir Isaac Newton: ‘It was the most ancient opinion that the planets revolved about the sun, that the earth, as one of the planets, described an annual course about the sun, while by diurnal motion it turned on its axis, and that the sun remained at rest’...  Newton spent a significant part of his adult life deeply immersed in hermetic and alchemical literature (http://dyg2.tripod.com/id4.html ) He was obsessed with the notion that a secret wisdom lay concealed within the pages of the scriptures (Daniel of the Old Testament and John of the New). He studies Hebrew in order to get involved himself in an exacting study of some twenty different versions of the book of Revelation. He then carried out a similarly meticulous exercise of the book of Ezekiel, and based on the information contained in this latter work, he produce a reconstruction of the floorplan of the Temple of Solomon for he was convinced this building was a cryptogram of the universe. Having deciphered this cryptogram, he believed that he would then know the mind of God...

* J. M. Keynes on Newton: ‘Newton saw the whole universe and all that is in it as a secret which could be read by applying pure thought to certain evidence, certain mystic clues which God had hid about the world to allow a sort of philosopher’s treasure hunt to the esoteric brotherhood. He believed that these clues were to be found partly in certain papers and traditions handed down by the brethren in an unbroken chain back to the original cryptic revelation’... Newton once stated that the law of gravitation expounded in his Principia was not new but rather had been known and fully understood in ancient times. He had arrived at it by decoding the sacred literature of the past ages. He also described Thoth as a believer in the Copernican System. He later aligned himself with the German Physician and alchemist Michael Meier (1568-1622) who had argued that all the true adepts of science had derived their knowledge from the Egyptian moon-god...

* The real pivotal figure in Newton’s theology was the prophet Moses, whom he regarded as an adept in the mysteries of the universe and a master of alchemy. Newton believed that Moses understood that matter consisted of atoms, and that these atoms were hard, solid and immutable. Newton also regarded the account of creation presented in Genesis, and attributed to Moses, as an allegorical description of an alchemical process... Referring to the efforts of the Alchemists, he said: ‘Our work brings forth the beginning out of black chaos and its first matter through the separation of the elements and the illumination of matter’... Knowledge and skills have frequently been transferred down the generations, and from one region of the world to another, without any concrete evidence being available to document the process. Rhabdas, a mathematician who lived in Constantinople in the 12th century AD, was known to have used a method for deriving square roots that had existed only in ancient Egypt more than 2000 years previously and that had not, otherwise, been employed elsewhere. The transmission of esoteric information, coupled with the teaching and sharing of arcane rituals and ceremonies, occurred for centuries within the various Masonic orders without any public record ever being available. Did Newton have access to the same ‘treasures of darkness’ and the same ‘hidden riches’ as Moses? This would imply the continuous existence over a period of millennia of a clandestine sect or cult structured to pass on an exclusive and privileged wisdom.

                                                    To be continued...