Honouring the myriad branches of tradition
Taking the World Tree for his metaphor, philosopher and cultural historian Nicholas Hagger traces the traditions and influences which have shaped human culture since the first civilisations
In his mid-twenties, Nicholas Hagger underwent what he describes as a ‘centre-shift’ to which he still refers in his books.
As a young professor of English in Japan, he began having visions and successions of images he at first thought were connected to his poems: ‘These resulted in my first experience of illumination, the Light, and it slowly became clear that, without realising it, I was already on a Mystic Way that would last nearly thirty years.’
The centre-shift, he writes, ‘was from my rational, social ego to my psychological soul, which eventually resulted in my instinctively seeing the universe as a unity in spite of all its contradictions: seeing the One behind its many forms … And with my centre-shift came new powers. I was fed knowledge from a deep source …’
Those who have been through a centre-shift, says Hagger, see through their psychological soul which opens to higher spiritual and divine worlds; academics who have not undergone a centre-shift see only partial Trees of Tradition, when the many traditions and influences are all within a pattern of unity to which one principle applies: behind all…
