Quest News is produced to introduce you to our staff and faculty, as well as to pass on exciting information about the upcoming Esoteric Quest Conference and Post Conference Tours. Our next conference is titled: An Esoteric Quest for Ancient Alexandria, Greco-Egyptian Birthplace of the Western Mind. This Quest will be taking place from June 12th – 17th, 2011, in Alexandria, Egypt. The conference will be followed by two optional journeys - one deeper into Ancient Egypt and the other to Cyprus. Please see http://www.esotericquest.org/ for more information.

Dear Friends,

I’m writing to confirm that our next Esoteric Quest will be in Alexandria, Egypt, the cradle of Western Esotericism, and will be co-sponsored with the Alexandria-Mediterranean Research Center at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, the new library of Alexandria that rises like a great discus on the shores of the Mediterranean. To prepare for an event of this significance we feel that we need a year and a half - so the dates will be June 12th to 17th of 2011.

I thought I’d offer some reflections on why we chose Alexandria for our next Quest. When we look back on the ancient world, we think immediately of Athens and Rome. But there was a third great city – Alexandria – that outshone them in learning and culture. Alexandria has been called the birthplace of the Western mind and the greatest crucible of philosophies and religions that the world has ever seen. Certainly, it was conceived by Alexander the Great as a ‘cosmopolis,’ a place where all the knowledge of the world could come together to create great advances in learning and wisdom.

From an esoteric point of view, Alexandria is the perfect place from which to view three great spiritual streams – Hermeticism, Gnosticism and Neo-Platonism. And as our grasp of ancient Alexandria grows firmer, we have a much fuller appreciation of the significance of the Platonic Academy of Marsilio Ficino in Renaissance Florence where the wisdom of Plato and Hermes Trismegistus reappeared after being lost to the West for many centuries.

The history of Alexandria is filled with fascinating figures - Alexander himself, who founded the city in 332BC; the Ptolemies who ruled as Hellenistic pharaohs for 250 years; and Cleopatra, Mark Anthony, and Julius Caesar. We also have the great Jewish philosopher, Philo of Alexandria, who did so much to bring together Greek philosophy and Hebraic religion; the Gnostic Christian teacher Clement of Alexandria; and of course the last, tragic pagan philosopher Hypatia who died in the early 5th Century AD.

And this is just scratching the surface. I haven’t even mentioned mathematicians and physicists like Euclid (much beloved by John Dee) and Archimedes, or the syncretic gods like Serapis who represented a fusion of ancient Egyptian and Greek religious tradition.

Alexandria was, above all, the meeting place of these two great cultures, but it was also a world where the civilizations of India and Africa met those of the Mediterranean and the Middle East. Located near the mouth of the Nile, it was ideally situated to be the ancient center of world culture. Its library was said to hold up to 750,000 manuscripts, and the Museion, the ancient world’s first university, was a magnificent building filled with lecture halls and research laboratories.

All in all, it was a phenomenal place. But unlike the other great capitals of antiquity, it slipped into obscurity after the Arab conquest, and when Napoleon arrived in Egypt he found nothing more than a simple fishing village with a few thousand inhabitants. The great monuments, the Library, the Museion, the Serapeion, the Soma which housed the body of Alexander, had all disappeared under the desert sands.

When I got there in October to scout the possibility of a conference I found an intense and friendly, if somewhat run down, city of 5.5 million. I had already been in touch with the people from the Alexandria-Mediterranean Research Center and they greeted me warmly. It turns out that although the Bibliotheca has been in existence now for six or seven years, it has never organized a major international event on the world of ancient Alexandria. So they were enthusiastic about the prospect of the Open Center bringing the Esoteric Quest to the Library, and thus the date was set.

Our Quest will continue the exploration of the wisdom and philosophies of antiquity begun on Samothrace in 2008, and it’s clearly going to be very deep and very special. I believe that it will fill in a missing piece of the esoteric puzzle to the great spiritual benefit of us all.

Ralph White
Conference Director

Exciting News from Alexandria!

Archaeologists have unearthed a 2,000-year-old temple that may have been dedicated to the ancient Egyptian cat goddess, Bastet, the Supreme Council of Antiquities said Tuesday. The ruins of the Ptolemaic-era temple were discovered by Egyptian archaeologists in the heart of the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria, founded by Alexander the Great in the 4th century B.C. To read the complete story click here.

Upcoming Events at the New York Open Center

Finding the Golden Thread—Contemporary Mystery Wisdom: Rudolf Steiner, Love and Freedom
Ralph White
Monday, March 22, 8pm

The Seven Soul Centers and the Western Path to Enlightenment
Robert M. Place
Friday, April 9, 7–10pm

The World of Ancient Alexandria
Ralph White
Friday, April 16, 7:30pm

Symbolist Egypt: Nativigating the Afterlife & the Doctrine of Immortality
John Anthony West
Friday, April 30, 7–10pm

To register for any of the above events, please call the New York Open Center at 212-219-2527, ext. 2, or see www.opencenter.org.

Website : Please send your friends to our website at www.EsotericQuest.org .

List Serves / Links: Do you know of some good list serves that we should send our information to? Or do you know of a good organization we can link to? Please let us know at quest@opencenter.org.

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