Of the dozens of texts held sacred by the school of Judaic mysticism known as Kabbalah, perhaps the most important is the Sefer Hazohar, (literally the Book of Splendor. Indeed, students of this collection of several lengthy Kabbalistic commentaries on the Torah — most commonly known in the West as the Holy Zohar – often assign it the same stature as Judaism’s two most holy books, the Torah and the Talmud.

Written in an arcane form of Aramaic, the Zohar purports to have been authored by second century rabbi and prominent critic of the Roman government in years following the destruction of the Second Temple, Shimon bar Yochai. Yochai claimed to have received the text from God himself, though most modern day scholars, however, attribute the work to Moses de Leon — a Spanish Kabbalist who lived some eleven hundred years later. Historians do concede, however, that, much like the books of the Bible, the disparate pieces of the Zohar were not all set down at one time. Rather, de Leon merely was the first to recorded several different tracts of the Oral Torah that passed been down from father to son, teacher to student over the course of many generations and that Yochai could have been an initial contributor.

The Kabbalah’s own inborn tradition details its spread. As the Jewish Diaspora spread throughout Europe and Eurasia after the fall of the Temple and, later, the crumbling of the Roman Empire, adepts of the “secret chain of mysteries” that is the Kabbalah brought the sacred knowledge with them, but shared it only with a select few. It would have been in this fashion that the original text of the Zohar was secreted out of the Holy Land and into one of Spain’s many Jewish communities.

And there was good reason for Jewish scholars to keep to the Zohar away from public scrutiny. The book maintains that the Torah and, by extension, all of reality exists on two distinct levels: the exoteric and the esoteric. It further posits that there is no one true interpretation of the Old Testament and that every soul is given – and, more importantly, encouraged — to make its own unique reading of scripture.

This statement alone – which happens to share a fair amount of philosophical overlap with the similarly persecuted Gnostics — would have been viewed as heresy by the religions by Spain’s then Judeo-friendly Catholic Church and citizens.

Consider then the anti-Semitism that swelled throughout the country in the years after Leon’s death. In 1492, all Spanish Jews were forcibly expelled; those that chose to convert in order to remain found themselves facing integration the hands of the Inquisition. And so, formal Kabbalic study was largely eradicated from the Iberian Peninsula – but not before the Zohar had managed become a key text of yet another secretive, albeit quasi-secular, sect: the European alchemists.

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Few educators in history have made such a profound effect on the shape of the future as John Locke. His practical, down to earth approach on education and his belief in the folly in the practice of divine kinship did much to shape the course of the Enlightenment period and the basis of modern European thought.

Locke was born in 1632 into an upper middle class family in England and studied medicine at Oxford. Early on Locke found himself disagreeing with professors who insisted on teaching the ancient Greek philosophers. He was more interested in newer theories and had a penchant for the works of Rene Descartes. Through his friendship with the mechanical philosopher Robert Boyle and the famed scientific rebel Isaac Newton, Locke found logic in the new theories floating around in the late 17^th century.

Soon after graduating from college, Locke came under the employ of the Earl of Shaftsbury and assisted him in a number of non medical matters including the administration of his estate, various business matters and also acted as his political advisor. The earl enjoyed Locke’s unique (for the time) views on the freedom of religion, the unbelief in absolutism and the desire for a democratic governing body for the country.

In 1682, Locke’s anti royal sentiments resulted in his banishment to Holland. It was in exile that Locke penned his influential work “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.” In 1688, the Glorious Revolution in which William of Orange overthrew the current English king, James II. This meant Locke could return to his homeland without fear of persecution or prosecution and so he did.

In 1690, Locke published his two treaties on government which were considered influential works in the revolutions of the 18^th century, namely America and France. Locke argued that revolution against tyranny was acceptable to bring legitimate rule to a nation. He also explained his thoughts on education which involved learning from experience not just because we exist.

During the 1690s Locke worked for the new British government in a number of positions including commissioner of plantations and trade. He continued with his theoretical writings, publishing on religion, government, ethics and education.

Locke retired to the country to live with friends and passed away in 1704, long before many of his works would influence the birth of a democratic America and the overthrow of royal power in France. But without Locke’s suggesting divine kingship as wrong and the rights of the citizens as the main work of any government, those two revolutions may have taken very different forms. His work on education would underlie the public school system in Britain and his thoughts on theology helped others find their own path to religious freedom. Locke was one of many that created the bedrock for the Enlightenment period.

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The I Ching (“Book of Changes”) is a key text of Chinese philosophy and a system of divination, devised between five and eight thousands years ago. A central pillar of Chinese culture, the book outlines what were to become the fundamentals of the Taoist religion, emphasizing the duality of ying and yang and the inevitability of change (hence the title). Both Laozi, the author of the Taoism’s central text, the Tao Che Ching, and Confucius were professed devotees of the work.

The book’s format, however, may seem unique to Western eyes. It is comprised of 64 hexagrams of broken (yin) and solid (yang) lines that each possesses a unique meaning, much like the cards of a Tarot deck. By choosing hexagrams at random–usually by means of a coin toss or the casting of yarrow sticks–users are supposed to be able to chart the flow of yin and yang energies and reveal secret glimpses into the higher order of the universe.

The I Ching first appeared in its current form in the 1143 BC, when King Wen, the first of the Chou dynasty, folded two sets of trigrams developed by the Emperor Fu-hsi more than 1500 years prior into the 64 hexagrams we are familiar with today. With the aid his son, the duke of Chou, he then set about devising a short summary of each character’s meaning that provided advice and commentary to would-be diviners.

Over the next thousand years, however, the secrets of the I Ching would become a closely guarded secret of the Chinese hierarchy. In 213 BC, Emperor Chin ordered all Confucian commentaries on the hexagrams burned. Fifty years later, the Emperor would commission a private examination of the I Ching for imperial use. This is known because one copy from this exercise turned up in the year 1715, with notes from more than 218 Chinese academics dating back to the second century BC.

Despite its widespread influence in the East, a definitive translation of the I Ching did not reach the West until the 20th century, when a German copy was released in 1929–an English edition followed in 1949. Both bore forewords by psychologist Carl Jung, who stated the system’s results perfectly illustrated his own theory of synchronicity. “The method of the I Ching does indeed take into account the hidden individual quality in things and men, and in one’s own unconscious self as well,” he wrote.

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