"Do not go outside; return within yourself. In the inner man dwells the truth." The line comes from a treatise by Saint Augustine of Hippo, a man most people picture as a stern father of the Church. Yet few Christian thinkers walked so far into the inner country of the soul. He wandered through its halls, measured its depths and wrote the first great map of it. In his Confessions he describes the mind as a place of "vast palaces," and in doing so he gave Western mysticism one of its most enduring images. The Seeker Before the Saint Augustine was born in 354 in Thagaste, a town in Roman North Africa. As a young student, he read Cicero's Hortensius , now lost, which woke in him a hunger for wisdom. That hunger led him, for about nine years, to the Manichaeans, followers of the Persian prophet Mani. Their religion taught that the universe was a battlefield between a Kingdom of Light and a Kingdom of Darkness, and that sparks of light lay imprisoned in matter, ...

Diplomat, Musician, or Spy? The London Arrest of Saint Germain

In the 1750s, the court of Louis XV at Versailles was the center of European fashion, politics and gossip. The king was known for his boredom, his love of diversion and his difficulty in finding anything truly new. Into this world came a man of mysterious origin who called himself the Count of Saint-Germain. He spoke many languages, played the violin, claimed to be very old and showed a talent for chemistry. He soon won the attention of the king, and for a few years he became one of the most discussed figures in France. Saint-Germain was never a minister or a general. His influence came from his personal charm, his learning and the favor of the court. He is remembered today as a man of legends, but the documents that survive show a real presence at the center of royal life. The Laboratories of the King According to many accounts, Louis XV gave Saint-Germain a laboratory at the Château de Chambord, the great Renaissance palace on the Loire. The king also set up smaller workspaces ...