Sacred Fire:

Panentheism in Nicholas
Roerich’s Art and
Philosophy

Sasha Chaitow
BA Comm, MA Eng.Lit.
MA Western Esotericism
 Act I: A Kiss of the Earth
The Augurs of Spring
Ritual of Abduction
Spring Rounds
Ritual of the Two Rival Tribes
Procession of the Oldest and Wisest One [the
Sage]
The Kiss of the Earth
The Dance Overcoming the Earth

Act II: The Exalted Sacrifice

Mystic Circle of the Young Girls
The Naming and Honoring of the Chosen One
Evocation of the Ancestors OR Ancestral Spirits
(Ritual Action of the Ancestors
Sacrificial Dance (The Chosen One)
 Joffrey Ballet
reconstruction
of the original
choreography for
“Rite of Spring”
 Pantheism: God is the (living) universe
and is in the universe. God can affect the
universe, but not vice versa.

Panentheism: the whole is more than a

sum of its parts: all is within God – but has
its own identity , purpose, and will, and can
effect change.
 The Perennial Philosophy: “Divine Truth is
one, timeless, and universal. The different
religions are but different languages expressing
that one Truth.”
William Stoddart
“The universe [is] the self-development of a primal, non-rational force that
can only be grasped by the intuitive powers of men of imaginative genius.”
Isaiah Berlin

[The damage caused by the inherent duality of the universe] “was first noted
by poets and artists,
and in this way poetry and art or sculpting may have been invented.”

“this striving after the primal inner aspiration of an Ideal […] should be the
focus for all outwardly effective creations of poetry and art of man.”
Franz Xavier von Baader

The poet is: “the recipient and transmitter of revelation and a divine
universal language”
“a priest who will lead humanity to its eschatological fulfillment by
relinking the world here below and divine transcendence.”

“Poetry is the intuitive faculty of penetrating the essence of beings

and things.”

Antoine Fabre d’Olivet, La langue hebraïque restituée, (1815-1816)

F. Schlegel, Novalis, Athenaeum (1798-1800)
 Life thunders - be watchful
Danger! The soul hearkens to its warning
The world is in turmoil - strive for salvation
In creation realise the happiness of life,
and unto the desert turn thine eye
Try to unfold the power of insight
That you may perceive the future unity of mankind
We possess the power to create and destroy obstacles
Thought is lightning
The spirit in revolt shatters the bolts of the prison
If a common myth haunts the minds of poets and initiates, it is the
myth of Prometheus: the man who wins divine powers and achieves
his own salvation, and the salvation of the entire universe, through
his own efforts.
Albert Beguin – Robert G. Cohn

Above all, poiein (ποιείν), means to create.

Antoine Faivre
Sacred Fire: Panentheism in
Nicholas Roerich’s Art and
Philosophy

Sasha Chaitow
BA Comm, MA Eng.Lit.
MA Western Esotericism

sashanonserviat@yahoo.com
www.sashanonserviat.net