In only 13 years Alexander the Great conquered one of the largest empires in human history whose influence continues to this day. His empire stretched from Greece, parts of north Africa, Egypt, and across approximately one fourth of the continent of Asia, all the way to India. Although vastly outnumbered, Alexander rapidly defeated the Persian Empire which encompassed almost half of the world’s population and was his most stunning achievement.
Like Sultan Mehmet II almost 2,000 years later, Alexander the Great carefully timed his most important battle and unlikely victory around a lunar eclipse, also known as a Blood Moon, and performed an astrological magic ritual shortly after his initiation into the most secret rites of the Egyptian priesthood. The astrologers of Mesopotamia foretold that this eclipse would precede the downfall of the ruling kingdom of Persia and the death of its king.
In this article I will summarize the important events that marked Alexander’s rapid rise and examine in detail the Blood Moon eclipse that coincided with his unlikely victory that quickly toppled one of the largest empires in the world. Which made Alexander king of almost half the world’s population, and whose impact led to rise of Rome and set the course for Europe’s future and much of the wider world.
Table of Contents
- Philosopher-King Educated by Aristotle
- A Young King to a Master of Warfare
- Alexander Becomes a God of Egypt
- The New Pharaoh Consults Seers
- The Blood Moon Eclipse of Alexander and Ultimate Gamble
- The Battle That Changed History
Philosopher-King Educated by Aristotle
Born in 356 BC in the capital of Macedon, he was the son of King Philip II and Queen Olympias. Greek thinking had reached new heights when some philosophers had earned respected positions in society after contact with the Persians and the famous Magi in centuries prior and produced significant reforms. Alexander was educated under the guidance of one of the greatest philosophers in history, Aristotle, just as the famous scholar Xenophon described the role of the Persian Magi in educating and nurturing wise philosopher-kings.
He took pains to show that he was the more assiduous in his service to the gods the higher his fortunes rose. It was at this time that the Persian priests, the Magians, were first established as an order, and always at break of day Cyrus chanted a hymn and sacrificed to such of the gods as they might name. (24) And the ordinances he established service to this day at the court of the reigning king. These were the first matters in which the Persians set themselves to copy their prince; feeling their own fortune would be the higher if they did reverence to the gods, following the man who was fortune’s favourite and their own monarch. At the same time, no doubt, they thought they would please Cyrus by this. (Cyropaedia, Book 8)
In a twist of irony, the rise of philosophers in Greece, who emulated the Persian priestly class, likely played a significant role in the rapid downfall of the Persian empire.
Renaissance painting of the Battle of Issus
A Young King to a Master of Warfare
In 336 BC, after the assassination of his father, Alexander the Great became King of Macedon at the age of 20. He immediately began military campaigns to expand his empire. While Alexander was educated by Aristotle, his father Philip II subdued and united the warring city-states of what is now Greece into a single unified kingdom, fighting under one banner and one king. Philip had infantry foot soldiers trained to fight in the style of the Spartans and their famous phalanx, which gained infamy at the Battle of Thermopylae. He assembled and trained expert cavalry, elite armored shock troops who fought on horseback. When Philip was assassinated, Alexander inherited a professional army of approximately 40,000 infantry and 3,000 to 4,000 cavalrymen. With his total force of less than 45,000 Alexander set out to conquer the Persian Empire, which historians estimate to have had anywhere between 500,000 to one million troops.
His first campaign was to conquer the western portion of Persia’s territory, Asia Minor, what is now Turkey in the Battle of Issus. Alexander was successful despite overwhelming odds; the Greeks being outnumbered by more than two to one in unfamiliar terrain. The Persian King, Darius III, responded to the emerging Greek threat with overwhelming force of over 100,000 troops.
Darius was defeated by Alexander’s unique and ingenious strategy that could be considered an early example of what is now called Maneuver Warfare, which emphasizes speed, initiative and the element of surprise to shatter the enemy’s cohesion and create disruption, damaging their will to fight.
Alexander’s army leveraged unpredictability: deliberately and rapidly changing tactics during battle to create confusion in their opponent’s command structure, slowing and disorganizing their responses to the chaotic situations while their formations struggled to keep pace and their command and control deteriorated. His most devastating maneuver was to quickly charge the center of the Persian army where the king himself was present and issued commands. Darius was forced to flee for his life and left his soldiers leaderless. It is this event that I will return to later to put into perspective the strange events following the lunar eclipse during their next encounter.
Darius no doubt expected a decisive victory because he personally led the enormous army accompanied by his wife and daughter. At the time, women who were captured by a conquering army were routinely enslaved or killed. In the best of cases, royalty would become an extremely valuable hostage and bargaining chip. Darius would not have risked them if he expected anything other than defeating the Greeks. Prior to this, Persia had failed to conquer Greece itself but that was in Greek lands where the defenders had the advantage of intimately knowing their own terrain. His queen and daughter were captured and accompanied Alexander on his rapid charge to Egypt, one of the most important parts of Persia’s empire. Egypt had long been venerated by the Greeks as the mother of all civilizations.
Alexander Becomes a God of Egypt
It was in Egypt that Alexander reached his most crucial turning point. For various reasons, the Egyptians were unsatisfied with their status as a Persian vassal state and welcomed Alexander as their ruler with open arms. Most significantly, they chose to crown the 24-year-old Greek king in the ancient city of Memphis as the Pharoah of Egypt. Like the Pharaohs before him for 3,000 years, Alexander also underwent a lengthy and secret initiation process in the Temple of Amun (or Amun-Ra), the Old Kingdom god of fire, air and the sun. While the process itself remains unknown, the Pharaohs who underwent the process with the guidance of the high priests emerged as a living representative and incarnation of the deity (similar to an Avatar in Hindu theology).
It will never be known what transpired with the priests, but it should be noted that Alexander grew up under the tutelage of philosophers, who sought out meditative and transcendent spiritual experiences since the time of Socrates and his daimon, who mentally guided him to his most profound ideas. Secret rites now lost to time such as the Orphic Mysteries would have been available to Alexander. His mother Olympias was of a family lineage that claimed direct descent from the Olympian Gods and all sources agree that she fully encouraged her son to believe in his divine lineage and that Zeus, not Philip, was his real father. Many later historians also claim that she was part of the Dionysian mystery cult. Whatever Alexander the Great had experienced in the two decades prior, he was deemed worthy of Egypt’s most sacred rite.
Alexander immediately decreed the design and founding of the port city that still bears his name, Alexandria. He built it on the principle that Cyrus had espoused of the importance of cross-cultural exchanges and religious tolerance, becoming the most important city in the Mediterranean and embodied in his famous library that was intended to house all of the known world’s collective knowledge by containing all existing writings within its walls. The Library of Alexandria contained as many as 400,000 scrolls at its zenith as the capital of knowledge and learning. His general Ptolemy later became Egypt’s ruler and founded the Ptolemaic dynasty of which the famed Queen Cleopatra was a descendant.
The Greek gods became identified with that of the Egyptians, often based on planetary attributes. Many earlier Greek thinkers, such as Plato, believed that the Greek pantheon was originally Egyptian. The Greek Hermes and Egyptian Thoth became Hermes Trismegistus (Hermes the Thrice-Great). This syncretic movement was the birth of Hermetic philosophy which preserved elements of ancient Egyptian thought for future ages. This period also saw the consolidation of astronomy and astrology from Babylon, Persia and Egypt into the Hellenistic form that was used throughout the Christian and Muslim world for the next two millennia.
For Darius, Alexander becoming the Pharaoh of Egypt was the point of no return and conflict had become inevitable. Darius had previously offered Alexander very generous terms to pursue peace, but his offers were refused. Clearly, Alexander had full certainty that he could take on the largest military force on earth and succeed. Egypt was one of, if not the most important parts of his empire. Egypt’s strategic location was the focal point between the east and western regions and was also considered the breadbasket, due to its abundant crops and high levels of food production that were essential for feeding the Persian empire’s vast population and military. The loss of Egypt effectively crippled Darius’s ability to sustain the immense web of trade routes and commerce that were the foundation of all that his predecessors had built. For Darius, Alexander the Great had quickly become an existential threat.
The New Pharaoh Consults Seers
Even with Egypt and its resources now under his control, Alexander was vastly outmatched by Darius by any estimates. Most sources estimate the size of Alexanders army around 50,000 after he seized control of Egypt, taking into account his losses from his previous clash with Darius and the troops he was able to recruit in Egypt. Darius had at his disposal a total of at least half a million soldiers and possibly as many as one million, with heavy cavalry, chariots, archers, elite shock troops like as the 10,000 Persian Immortals that dwarfed any opponent. The army commanded by Darius was seasoned and experienced after centuries of expansion. The Greeks had ventured to conquer outside of their own lands for the first time and Darius chose to allow Alexander to come to him for war, forcing the Greeks to fight on unfamiliar terrain. Alexander had no way of knowing what Darius had planned for him. There was no reason to think that Darius had not learned from his previous defeat and adapted his strategy for the next encounter.
In short, to attack the Persian Empire head-on was sheer insanity by any estimate but Alexander the Great chose to do so and easily won.
Before this, the Greeks had resisted multiple attempts by the Persians to conquer them but had never attempted to expand their borders in any significant way, much less build an empire. What had changed? The use of astrology as a serious factor in their decision-making process was a relatively new tool for the Greeks. Egypt’s temples were a major hub of the practice, home to the most skilled and proven astrologers, drawing on at least 5,000 years of their own traditions as well as that of the Babylonians and the Persians. Astrology had recently begun to flourish in Greece due to Persian influence and Alexander would have doubtlessly been eager to employ the best divination that the world had to offer. Historians such as Plutarch, Arrian and Diodorus Sicilus attest to Alexander employing astrologers. Diodorus states:
When Alexander was about to enter Babylon, the so called Chaldeans came to meet him. These Chaldeans have gained much glory through astrology, as they can predict – by the means of their age long observation of the stars – the future events. And the Chaldeans predicted the death of the king in Babylon. (“Historical Library”, book XVII, 112.1)
Until relatively recently, seers and diviners served all kings throughout recorded history. In many ways they fulfilled the role of modern intelligence agencies whose directors advise heads of state on important decisions. Throughout Alexander’s conquest, he was accompanied by Aristander of Telmessos, a mystic and magician who served as a close advisor to his father Philip and enjoyed the status of being his favorite seer. Most historical accounts of Aristander were written posthumously, but the Greek historian Ephorus of Cyme lived before and during Alexander’s time and wrote favorably of his skills in divination. The modern notion of diviners telling kings only what they wanted to hear with vague answers is patently false, as there are countless records of them being put to death for failure in the ancient world, sometimes for the smallest shortcoming or failing to provide useful information on the most impossible questions. Aristander is widely written to have served Alexander well for crucial decisions.
Plutarch wrote in his biography “Life of Alexander” that in 332 BC, while consolidating his rule over Egyptian territories, Alexander visited the Oracle of Siwa in the desert of Libya. This oracle served the god Amun and was considered one of the most prestigious and skilled oracles in the world. The Greeks recognized the Egyptian god Amun as Zeus, the latter of whom Alexander the Great already considered himself an incarnation of. Plutarch and other ancient sources widely agree that Alexander was warmly welcomed in the temple of the Oracle of Siwa and that he was told not only that he was the son of Amun, but that his destiny was to conquer the world.
While it could be argued that Alexander’s visit to the oracle was a calculated political move to legitimize himself in Egypt, his decision to attack Darius’s forces in unknown territory would be considered very ill-advised by any skilled military strategist today. Alexander was by all accounts extremely intelligent beyond his years, having been educated by one of the most brilliant thinkers in the world, and was anything but gullible. In 331 BCE, the year after becoming Pharaoh and founding Alexandria, Alexander marched east into Mesopotamia to fight what was then the most powerful military force on earth while hopelessly outnumbered, and quickly succeeded.
The Blood Moon Eclipse of Alexander and Ultimate Gamble
Like Mehmet II, who achieved a seemingly impossible victory 2,000 years later during a lunar eclipse, Alexander’s decisive battle against Darius took place under similar circumstances in an event that historians dubbed “The Eclipse of Alexander”. A Total Lunar Eclipse occurred on September 20, 331 BCE at 9:16 pm, a few hours after sunset. Records of the time say that Alexander the Great performed a ritual during the eclipse, making offerings and prayers to the sun, moon and earth. This act is what would be called a ritual petition in Book 3 of Picatrix, compiled over 1,000 years after Alexander’s death. According to Picatrix, the eclipse is among the most destructive astrological forces.
From the Sun, the Moon, and the fixed stars come permanent mutations; from these, things suffer change, receiving benefits from good qualities and harm from bad ones. Eclipses affect the Sun and Moon and other planets and influence them to the harm of other composite bodies. Do not believe for a moment that the Sun or Moon receive any harm in their nature or accidents thereby; and we will call this an impediment of the heavens, so that you will understand that the reason that harm comes […..] because the four elements are altered, changed and damaged. (Picatrix, Book 2, Chapter 3, page 68, Warnock & Greer)
The eclipse of September 20, 331 BCE in a modern quadrant chart. (Source: The Classical Astrologer)
How the chart of this eclipse would have been cast is impossible to determine with certainty. It is entirely possible that sidereal was still the predominant system of the time in Egypt. Due to the Precession of the Equinox, the star groups within each sign would be in entirely different signs in a tropical chart today. If the tropical system were used, it would most likely have used Whole Sign Houses, which Hellenistic astrology researchers now widely agree was the standard practice. Regardless, the destructive astrological power of the eclipse was recognized and feared long before the life of Alexander.
Some of the oldest recorded astrological information comes from ancient Babylon which has survived in clay tablets. Tablet 16 of the Enuma Anu Enlil, likely compiled from 1500-1100 BCE but containing information from the Old Babylonian period (2000-1600 BCE), makes no qualms about the spiritual properties of eclipses (1). It could be a killer of kings. Among the statement of these tablets regarding the eclipse are:
The gods will become angry.
The land of the prince will be destroyed.
The land will suffer calamity.
The king will die.
The land will go to ruin.
It is known from ancient tablets that the fear of eclipses among kings was terrifying enough to require an elaborate attempt to offer a “substitute king” to the destructive astrological forces. The Akkadian kings are recorded to have selected a commoner before eclipses and put him on the throne, complete with full royal regalia, respects and honors, until after the eclipse had occurred. The real king would divest himself of all royal trappings and went into hiding during this period. There are suggestions that in some cases the “substitute king” was killed afterwards and given a royal burial to satisfy the astrological gods’ aim of regicide. For an astrologer priest and magician whose goal was to harness, redirect and synchronize the effects of the heavens for influencing events on earth, an eclipse was the ideal choice to ensure the worst of luck fell upon Darius III, and especially the Blood Moon eclipse in 331 BCE.
Historical records also show that the Eclipse of Alexander was also foretold in some respects from Mesopotamian astrologers over one thousand years before. (2) Babylonian astrologers meticulously forecast the dates of all future eclipses centuries ahead of time, and described the different planetary configurations and positions that influenced its specific effects, ranging from nothing, minor inconveniences, war and to large-scale disasters. Regarding the conditions of this eclipse, the Enuma Anu Enlil states that:
If, in the month of Ulūl (August/September), on the day 14, an eclipse happens: rebellion against the king, a great army will fall.
A Seleucid tablet from Uruk further states that:
The Moon or the Sun are eclipsed (and) Jupiter is faint: end of a kingdom. The Moon or the Sun are eclipsed and Jupiter is not present: end of a kingdom.
All these conditions were present in the Blood Moon eclipse of Alexander. Saturn would have been visible next to the moon, around two hours after Jupiter disappeared below the western horizon. It was impossible that Darius was not aware of their significance with the Magi as his advisors. For two centuries the Persian Magi had practiced their craft alongside the Babylonian astrologers and would have had this knowledge and likely much more.
According to the Anabasis of Alexander, Chapter 7, Alexander performed a ritual under the instructions of his most trusted seer Aristander while the eclipse occurred in the skies above him on the banks of the Tigris River, where his army was camped, unable to cross due to the heavy currents. They also could not confidently determine the location of Darius’s army.
There he made his army rest, and while so doing, an eclipse of the moon nearly total occurred. Alexander thereupon offered sacrifice to the moon, the sun and the earth, whose deed this was, according to common report. Aristander thought that this eclipse of the moon was a portent favourable to Alexander and the Macedonians; that there would be a battle that very month, and that victory for Alexander was signified by the sacrificial victims.
It is impossible to know what his thought process was, but soon after performing the ritual he decided to take a dangerous gamble and risk everything. Four days after the eclipse Alexander the Great was able to successfully bring his troops across the river in what all accounts agree was an extremely dangerous endeavor. The water levels in the shallowest parts of the river were over chest level and the risk of his entire force being washed away and drowned was severe. Alexander ordered the men to lock arms and form a “human bridge” of sorts to get across through their collective strength and resist the strong force of the river. Against most expectations, the crossing was successful. He then pushed forward across the desert in pursuit of the Persian army, and his scouts began to provide useful and accurate intelligence reports on the enemy locations. His long and unusual streak of good fortune was increasing. But Alexander was charging headfirst into the largest and most successful military force on earth, whose king Darius was fully aware that the fate of the entire Persian Empire hinged on this battle.
Sources:
(1) Michael Baigent. “From the Omens of Babylon”. Arkana, 1994, pp 111-120
(2) V.F. Polcaro, G.B. Valsecchi, L. Verderame. “The Gaugamela Battle Eclipse: An Archaeoastronomical Analysis”. Mediterannean Archaeology and Archaeometry, Vol. 8, No. 2, pp. 55-64, 2008.
Further Reading:
Sparavigna, Amelia. “On Dating the Lunar Eclipse of Alexander and the Battle of Gaugamela: Discussion of Evidence and Use of Archaeoastronomy for Chronology”. Polytechnic University of Turin.
The Battle That Changed History
On October 1st, eleven days after the eclipse, Alexander the Great led his small force of 47,000 against a force of anywhere from 120,000 to almost one million, according to some ancient sources, at Gaugamela near Mosul in modern-day Iraq. Exact numbers for the Persian forces vary, but widely agree that Persian forces vastly outnumbered the Macedonians. A reasonable estimate is 250,000. Darius knew what was at stake and brought all the forces he could muster. Many historians estimate that the Persian cavalry alone outnumbered all of Alexander’s forces, whose cavalry was only 7,000. The famous 10,000 Persian Immortals were all present at the battle, along with 1,500 archers, 200 scythed chariots and 15 war elephants, the ancient equivalent of modern-day tanks.
In their previous encounter, Darius had seen firsthand Alexander’s unusual tactics and the defeat had already cost him dearly. It is difficult to imagine him falling for the same trick twice, as Darius III was a highly intelligent and capable king and commander by all accounts. He was a self-made man and did not inherit his throne, working his way up by excelling in a variety of government posts and eventually marrying into Persian nobility which made him eligible for kingship. He was chosen for his excellent track record in all prior endeavors. I am emphasizing his accomplishments to illustrate the fact that he was not gullible nor incompetent, and unlikely to have not learned from his first encounter with Alexander’s forces. He would have expected the same tactics of the smaller force making chaotic moves to divide his forces, planned accordingly, and used his overwhelming forces effectively. But that is not what happened. A full description of the battle is beyond the scope of this article, but it can be summarized as: For Darius, everything that could go wrong went disastrously wrong.
The Macedonian (Greek) phalanx
The Greek infantry, unsurprisingly, engaged the Persians using the phalanx formation of which they were famous for centuries. The phalanx was a tight rectangular formation where each soldier used his shield to block attacks on all sides and from arrows above, while employing long spears to stab enemy troops who engaged them on any side. The effectiveness of the phalanx was so successful that it was later adopted as a fundamental practice for all Roman foot soldiers.
The Persians engaged Alexander’s infantry formations with overwhelming numbers and the best weaponry of the time. Darius kept himself placed firmly in the center rear of his massive formations to issue commands, as was the standard Persian army practice. As he did in his previous battle with the Persians in Asia Minor, Alexander executed a fast and chaotic move. The small Greek cavalry soldiers quickly rode their horses to the right of the Persians in a flanking maneuver.
Instead of ordering his massive forces to stay together, continue to bombard the Greek infantry and force Alexander’s cavalry to come to them, Darius divided his forces to pursue and attack, and in doing so, opened a wide gap that exposed himself to the enemy like their previous battle. Alexander wasted no time in quickly charging directly at Darius with a small element of cavalry. A spear was thrown at Darius and missed him but killed his chariot driver. Darius turned and fled the battlefield as before, leaving his army without command and control, and the Greek soldiers easily won. Alexander’s forces suffered approximately 1,000 casualties while the Persian losses were between 50,000 to 100,000. According to Arrian of Nicomedia, over 300,000 Persian troops were captured. In a single day Alexander the Great had conquered Mesopotamia and half of Persia itself.
Darius fled east, having narrowly escaped death twice, and catastrophic misfortune followed him.
Death of Darius and End of the Persian Empire
After suffering a crippling defeat and losing half of the Persian Empire in a single day, eleven days after Alexander performed an astrological ritual under an eclipse that his astrologers of would have interpreted as especially baneful, Darius fled to what remained of the empire in the east. Alexander was intent on taking everything and to be the new king of Persia, the old king, Darius, had to be fully defeated. He had narrowly escaped death at the hands of Alexander twice and he knew that Alexander would waste no time in finding him.
Darius traveled to the mountainous terrain of Bactria, in what is now Afghanistan. In the year that followed Alexander traveled through Persia and easily captured key cities, establishing Greek control, many of which offered no resistance. Darius arrived near the Hindu Kush to rally troops in what remained his territory. His plan for countering the imminent arrival of Alexander’s army was the same tactics that has made Afghanistan famous, especially in modern times. He planned to use the infamously harsh mountain terrain to his advantage and conduct a prolonged guerrilla war against the invaders with hit and run tactics. This was an especially good plan on the part of Darius, considering Afghanistan’s long record of success. Alexander had beaten Darius using unconventional tactics and he intended to do the same. But it was not to be, and his catastrophic ill luck followed him.
Before Alexander arrived with his army, less than a year after the eclipse and Battle of Gaugamela, Darius was betrayed and murdered by one of his own governors and relatives, Bessus. When Alexander arrived, he found the corpse of the Persian king, who was the most powerful man on earth only a few years before, unceremoniously lying on the side of a road, exposed to the elements and nature. The writings of the Mesopotamian astrologers a thousand years prior about what came to be known as the Eclipse of Alexander had proven correct. A kingdom was lost, and its king was dead. Many historians wrote that Alexander wanted to capture Darius in Bactria and not kill him like his two previous attempts in battle. Alexander the Great had Persia under his control and showing mercy to their fallen king would have established a reputation as a benevolent ruler. If this was indeed the case, the murder of Darius is all the more compelling in light of the astrologers’ predictions.
Alexander and his troops honored Darius with a royal funeral and ordered Bessus captured, and he was executed for the murder of his king. Alexander the Great was now the most powerful man on earth at the age of 25 and held three crowns: the King of the Macedonians, Egypt, and Persia.
The Final Conquest of Alexander
During the next two years, Alexander consolidated his rule over the Persian Empire and expanded it into what is now most of Afghanistan and parts of central Asia. From 327-325 BCE, Alexander finally reached the limits of his seemingly supernatural luck when he led his army over the Hindu Kush mountains, arguably the most brutal terrain on earth, to invade India. Along the way he faced constant skirmishes with local tribes, logistical difficulties, and the toll of the unforgiving terrain and weather on his troops. He arrived in northern India and set out to conquer the subcontinent with troops who had been pushed to unthinkable levels of exhaustion. The fact that his army survived the mountain trek intact was itself miraculous. But the harsh and thick jungles of India proved too much. Alexander had underestimated the sheer size of the Indian population, with countless kings who ruled over constantly warring city-states eager to fight off the invaders. After seven years of impossible success after success, Alexander decided to return to Persia with his troops and rule his empire.
The reign of the seemingly unstoppable Alexander the Great was not destined to be a long one. Two years after departing India, Alexander fell severely ill in the Babylonian palace of Nebuchadnezzar II and died shortly thereafter, less than four months before his 33rd birthday. His cause of death was never determined and has been the subject of much speculation for over 2,000 years. Even his resting place remains a mystery. His body was transported to Egypt where he was mummified, given a Pharoah’s funeral and placed inside a golden coffin. The final resting place of Alexander the Great remains a mystery to this day, having been the object of countless searches and all have turned up empty.
Alexander’s Legacy and Legends
The Macedonian Empire was divided among his generals after his death and most only survived a few centuries, the Ptolemaic Dynasty of Egypt perhaps being the most well-known. The Roman Empire, which quickly rose in its place and supplanted it, sought to emulate the Macedonian Empire established by Alexander. His life and legacy were cemented as one of the greatest military minds of all time, with his tactics studied and emulated by future conquerors such as Julius Caesar, Mehmet II, Napoleon Bonaparte and many others. Mehmet II was an ardent admirer of Alexander and sought to emulate him, securing his own impossible victory and quickly creating a massive empire around a lunar eclipse.
His seemingly supernatural command of his surroundings made him the subject of many medieval Islamic esoteric writings, much of it influenced by Hermeticism. Alexander became a mythical soldier, sage and miracle worker in the minds of many for over a thousand years after his death. Works of philosophy, alchemy, astrology and talismans were attributed to Alexander (Iksander in Arabic). A handbook of astrological magic called the Book of the Treasure of Alexander was discovered in the royal library of the Ottoman palace in Istanbul, among many other similar works. His teacher Aristotle was also attributed as the author of many Islamic works to confer a sense of authority and antiquity to the reader. Alexander the Great was the subject of a medieval Islamic esoteric tradition referred to as Pseudo-Aristotelean Hermetica, of which Liana Saif has written many excellent works and are highly recommended reading for anyone interested in the development of Hermeticism or the lasting impact of Alexander the Great’s life.
Further Reading on Alexander The Great and Hermeticism
Explore deeper into the fascinating world of Alexander the Great and the mystical traditions of Hermeticism with these scholarly resources:
- “A Preliminary Study of the Pseudo-Aristotelian Hermetica: Texts, Context, and Doctrines” by Liana Saif, University of Amsterdam, 2021. This comprehensive study delves into the complex texts and doctrines of the Pseudo-Aristotelian Hermetica, offering insights into their historical and philosophical context. Read the study on Al-ʿUsur al-Wusta by Yasmine Al-Saleh, November 2010.
- “Amulets and Talismans from the Islamic World”. Explore the Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History for a fascinating look at the role of amulets and talismans in the Islamic world, presented by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. This resource provides a rich visual and historical exploration of protective and magical objects across Islamic cultures. Discover more at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
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