“J.C. Could you please tell us briefly the great alchemical myth of the founding of Prague by the pagan princess prophetess, Libuse and her ploughman husband, Premysl?
L.A. This is very significant. Libuse is the Czech version of the Delphic Sibyl. She was a virgin ruler of the people here perhaps more than twelve hundred years ago. They were not satisfied with a woman ruler and demanded a king. From her fortress presumed now to be at Vysehrad she went into a trance. She ordered her soldiers to follow her white horse through the forest to the future king. The horse led the soldiers to the ploughman, Premysl. They presented him with fine clothes and an invitation to become king. He set free his oxen who disappeared into the earth or according to other versions ascended into the sky. Then he placed his ploughman’s staff into the ground and it immediately took root, blossomed and flowered. According to some versions at the time he was approached he was using his iron plough blade as a table for his lunch. All of these items have Hermetic import. He went on to become a great ruler. The country blossomed and flowered.
I personally went to the place where this happened. During a rain storm I used my screw driver to dig up some sacred mud. As I dug, my screw driver became mysteriously deformed. I got some mud and made a cup which for me embodies the sacredness of the Holy Grail.
It is believed that Libuse still sleeps under the hilltop fortress of Vysehrad and will awaken when Bohemia is in greatest danger. During the Velvet Revolution, on the 17th of November, 1989, thousands of students spontaneously assembled at Prague’s south end, upon Vysehrad’s temenos, the sacred precinct of Libuse. They lit candles and held an all night vigil as if to invoke her help. Then followed the miraculous bloodless revolution. The communists quit. The Russians went home. Democracy was restored.
J.C. Is this myth alive for the Czech youth today?
L.A. Consciously no it is not. But unconsciously this myth is a vital part of contemporary Czech culture. Its origins might only have emerged from the romanticism of the 19th century Czech National Revival. There are older versions of this myth. According to some the knights of St.Wenceslas sleep inside the sacred hollow mountain of Blanik or beneath the castle fortress of Melnik waiting to come to the aid of Bohemia in its hour of greatest need. Other versions have nothing to do with St.Wenceslas. This collective memory although not clear is yet alive and sleeps in the Czech landscape. The recent Czech Olympic Hockey victory is an aspect of this egregore of Wenceslas and his knights coming to the aid of Bohemia. For a moment his sleeping soldiers awoke to become the victorious Hockey players.
J.C. Is Vysehrad a sacred location even in spite of its doubtful historic authenticity as Libuse’s fortress?
L.A. Yes it is. I believe the actual site of her central fortress was Sarka, where we visited earlier today, just west of Prague. It is close to White Mountain and the Star Palace. Although barren the land here still resonates with a potent mystic charge.
J.C. Bohemians are often pictured as people who glory in cheap beer, free love and bad poetry. What does it mean to be a Bohemian Hermeticist?
L.A. There is a popular misconception of Bohemians as Gypsies. One frequently meets the image of the gypsy fortune tellers or occult magicians. Their life style is strange and very different from Czech Hermetic vision. The roots of Czech Bohemian Hermeticism emerge from Jan Hus and Komenski. It finds expression as Rosicrucian philosophy and general esoteric tradition for example the work of Jacob Boehme….”
A fascinating interview displaying the intersection of mysticism and dissidence during the Velvet Revolution. the non-violent sloughing off of communist rule in Czechoslovakia.