This is a series that will seem very strange and far-fetched. I have avoided researching the topic seriously for myself for so long because it involves multi-generational plots, which inherently become conspiratorial narratives. It becomes difficult to analyze the truth of claims related to such narratives because they are by nature historical narratives, which we tend to regard with a high floor of skepticism. We do, after all, have to rely on what people thought and wrote about themselves and others. However, there comes a point when the same narrative continuously appears in places where one was not looking for it and would least expect it, and at this point it becomes prudent to give the narrative a second thought regardless of how far-fetched it appears at first glance.
Emerging Coincidences
Before I started researching academic trees on academictree.org, my knowledge of a man named Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955) was limited to him being a French Jesuit priest, theologian, philosopher and teacher. I also understood that he had a Darwinian worldview and authored several influential (particularly at the United Nations) theological and philosophical books, where he blended religion with the principles of natural history. After his name appeared in the academic tree that I was building to trace the roots of Marxist thought, I realized that there was likely to be some connection between the history of natural history and the United Nations. This is when the coincidences began to emerge.
Emerged - John Montgomery Dictionary of Maya Hieroglyphs
It turns out that Chardin was far more active as a scientist and paleontologist than I would have imagined had I not looked at this from the context of academic trees. The image below shows the academic tree containing Chardin’s closest “relatives”, and I’ve highlighted the first of the strange coincidences. Jia Lanpo is considered the founder of Chinese anthropology. Not only is Chardin one of his academic mentors, Henri Breuil, another Jesuit, is among the mentors as well.
Several questions came to mind as a result of these coincidences:
Why are two Jesuit priests assisting in the seeding of the concept of palaeoanthropology in China?
Why is Pierre Teilhard de Chardin employed at the National Museum of Natural History in France?
Why is Henri Breuil a professor of “prehistoric ethnology” at College de France?
Was there any significance to the fact that Jia Lanpo’s other two academic mentors worked for the Geological Survey of China?
This seemed to me to be too many strange coincidences to ignore, so I began researching the Society of Jesus while also researching the history of natural history, along with the names of other people on the tree.
The Age of Buffon
“The universe is in state of perpetual evolution. This, of course, had been an axiom for every naturalist at least as far back as Darwin but as a general thought going back to the age of Buffon.” - Ernst Mayr. Roots of Dialectical Materialism
In the quote above, Ernst Mayr relates that he traced the treatment of evolution as an axiom to Buffon. I was reading up on Ernst Mayr because I was interested in his world view after discovering his academic lineage was very similar to that of Richard Lewontin, a prominent Marxist in the American university system. I did not have Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (1707-1788) on my academic tree, but when I searched academictree.org for Buffon, his name did come up. You can see where he fits into the tree in the image below (in relation to Darwin).
Buffon was the academic great grandfather of Charles Darwin. Buffon attended the Jesuit College of Godrans in Dijon from the age of ten onwards. He went on to write 36 volumes of natural history in his Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière, which would seem to be in conflict with his Jesuit upbringing. When I saw the seal on the title page of his book, I couldn't help but notice the similarity to the seal on a Jesuit map I had seen in my simultaneous research into the Jesuits (see image below).
The number of times the Jesuits come up in the forefront of the spread of natural history by coincidence continued to stack up as I investigated further.
Jesuits and Natural History
Although the Society of Jesus is typically said to have been founded in 1540, it was founded by Ignatius of Loyola, and 6 other founding Jesuits, including his companion Francis Xavier in 1534. The seven took vows at Montmartre, Paris in 1534 of poverty and chastity and obedience to the Pope, and also vowed to go to the Holy Land to convert infidels. So somewhere between 1534-1540 is when some of these impoverished men began taking very expensive voyages around the known world. In an impressive act of humility, Ignatius of Loyola became the first Superior General of the Society of the Jesus, also known as the Black Pope (with the Roman Catholic Pope being the White Pope). Jesuits were instrumental in leading the Counter-Reformation. In 1546, Francis Xavier proposed the establishment of the Goan Inquisition in a letter addressed to the Portuguese King, John III. In 1534, Saint Ignatius of Loyola established the Church of the Gesù (See image below) and it was the home of the Superior General of the Society of Jesus (Black Pope) until 1773.
Notice the seal above the front entrance of the church; this is seen on many Jesuit artifacts and the meaning will become apparent with time. While the Jesuits were active in the inquisition in the old world, they were also active in the new world. In 1553, at the age of thirteen, José de Acosta (1539-1600) became a novice in the Society of Jesus in Medina del Campo. After lecturing in theology, he left for Lima, Peru in 1570, where the Jesuits had been established in 1569. As a Jesuit “missionary” and naturalist in South America, Acosta wrote one of the first detailed and realistic descriptions of the new world, Natural and Moral History of the East and West Indies (see image below).
So, it turns out that one of the first books on Natural History was written by a Jesuit and proudly depicted their seal. This raises one of the biggest questions that comes to mind...
Why were the Jesuits implementing inquisitions in the late 16th century while, coincidentally, also writing books promoting Natural History?
If we look at each question as an equation in mathematics, and each symbol as variable of unknown value or meaning, we need the same number of unknowns as equations to solve for the unknowns. Since we have so many questions and only one symbol, we would need to find more symbols to help solve the equations for their remaining unknowns.
Finding the answer to these riddles will require the introduction of a few more symbols with their associated context and meaning, which I will cover in my next post where I will look at more symbols and coincidences surrounding this enlightening academic tree.
See full tree (so far) here.