(82) Porpora

About ten years ago, mass media started to alert us to the fact—supposed fact—that “the bees are disappearing”. This information was conveyed across the media and even appeared in popular TV series such as the BBC’s Dr. Who—perhaps you dismissed it as another environmental craze adjunct to climate change; or perhaps, as I did, you thought it was rather sad and yet otherwise took no notice. Allegedly, the end of the bees would lead to “total environmental collapse” and there was an upsurge in bee-keeping to combat this eventuality.

In Persian, the word “sarman” means “bee”—it also means “he who preserves the teachings of Zoroaster”; and, non-coincidentally, it sounds rather like Saruman in JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. Etymologically, “sar” means “head” and “man” means “quality transmitted by a family or race”—a “sarman” means a chieftain who is a repository of wisdom or tradition; or, alternatively, “a clear-headed one” (i.e. an enlightened one)—so “Saruman” was a corrupted “Sarman”, unenlightened. The Sarman are said to gather “the honey”, the wisdom of tradition—and this is a spiritual energy that has been buzzing since at least Zoroaster’s time but found physical manifestation with Christ. It has been said that this “Inner Circle of Humanity” goes back so far as 2,500 BC in Babylon, about the time the Great Pyramid was constructed—well, perhaps. For certain, the notion was attested to in the Christian tradition in 1222 (esoterically significant) in a book called The Book of the Bees by Mar Salomon, a Nestorian Christian bishop.

So—the bees have disappeared, and the world will collapse without the bees. Yes, in our materialist world this could only mean biological bees—what else could it be? Better build some hives, boys…You see the problem, the bees that have vanished are not the little black-and-yellow creatures with wings—the bees that have disappeared are the wisdom chiefs, the clear-headed enlightened ones. This is how deeply we have fallen into matter. Buzz.