The Four Ages Simplified

Golden Age

We begin the Golden Age with Karl Jaspers’ Axial Age, and end with late antiquity. This is classical antiquity. This is the period of brahmins. The pre-Socratics flourish in ancient Greece. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle flourish in ancient Greece. The Buddha flourishes in India. Laozi and Zhuangzi flourish in China. Jesus ﵇ splits this period in two. The Golden Age ends properly with the following:

• The fall of the Western Roman Empire.
• The codification of the Babylonian Talmud.
• Muḥammad ﷺ, the last prophet, or founder of a major world religion.
• The death of ʿAlī ﵇, who is the last person to combine spiritual and temporal rulership in one. The Twelver Shīʿī Imāms ﵈ who follow ʿAlī ﵇ possess spiritual rulership, but not temporal rulership, and each dies an untimely death. The hereditary Umayyad and ʿAbbasid caliphates that follow possess temporal rulership, but not spiritual rulership. Cf. Julius Evola’s analysis in his Revolt Against the Modern World: The Golden Age ends when spiritual and temporal power separate! Cf. René Guénon’s ﵁ work as well.
• The end of the Sasanian Empire.

Ancient Greece and Rome greatly exemplify this period.

Silver Age

The Silver Age is the Middle Ages, which belongs to kings and monarchs. This is the period of kṣatriyas. The great philosophers of this age were Ibn al-ʿArabī ﵁, Moses Maimonides, Saint Thomas Aquinas, and so on. This period ends with the Protestant Reformation of Martin Luther. The King Arthur myth greatly exemplifies this period.

The Byzantine Empire, Holy Roman Empire, Mongol Empire, Umayyad and ʿAbbasid caliphates, and Vikings all exemplify this age. In some sense Roman Catholicism exemplifies this age, as the Popes engaged in the Crusades, which exemplified temporal power, but not spirituality. The revivification of spirituality through Martin Luther and the Reformers ends this period.

Bronze Age

The Bronze Age is the early modern period, which belongs to businessmen. This is the period of vaiśyas. During this time, the East India Company and United East India Company flourished, giant multinational corporations with huge armies. The 2019 video game The Outer Worlds satirizes a possible dystopian future where megacorporations place people in cryostasis and ship them to distant planets in the hopes of colonizing them. But these themes are more of a feature of our past than our future. During this time, the Royal African Company and Dutch West India Company participate in the Atlantic slave trade. The early modern period ends with the likes of G. W. F. Hegel, Immanuel Kant, and Søren Kierkegaard.

John D. Rockefeller was the last great exemplary of this period.

Iron Age

Late modernity ends with the death of Friedrich Nietzsche, who boldly attempted to infuse existence with meaning after the so-called “death of God.” World War II begins contemporary history proper. This period belongs to the śūdras, the laborers. The philosophy of Karl Marx takes hold. Psychoanalysis begins with Sigmund Freud. The Traditionalist School arises, comprising Frithjof Schuon ﵁, Julius Evola, and René Guénon ﵁, all of whom hurl invectives at postmodernity. Several strange events happen in the twentieth century:

• New religious movements like the Baháʼí Faith, Mormonism, Scientology, Thelema, and Theosophy. Cf. the “thirty Dajjāls” tradition of the Prophet ﷺ.
• The invention of airplanes, automobiles, film and television, the Internet and World Wide Web, and so on.
• The fall of the Qing dynasty, ending the millennia-long Chinese pattern of monarchy, and the rise of Communist China.
• World War I and World War II.
• The sexual revolution of the ’60s, coterminous with the baby boom.
• The New Age, the death knell of which was Richard’s breakthrough into actual freedom. See The Actual Freedom Trust website.

We are now at present day!

Notes

• A previous version of this article appended an Islamic honorific after every historical figure. There seem to be many ways to approach this.

  One method, which I could call the “strictly Muslim” approach, would append an honorific after those individuals who explicitly identified as Muslim during their lifetime, as well those whom Islamic tradition honors—or retroactively considers to be Muslim. In this approach, Frithjof Schuon ﵁, Jesus ﵇, and René Guénon ﵁ would all receive honorifics.

  A second approach—which accords more with the thinking the Traditionalist School—would consider the founders of major world religions to be messengers in the Islamic sense, if not at least prophets. The Buddha and Kṛṣṇa would receive the honorific Peace be upon him or ﵇ in this approach. (The latter is not strictly speaking the founder of Hinduism, but is a major avatāra. Cf. Schuon’s ﵁ Stations of Wisdom.) Likewise, great sages or revered saints within major religious traditions, such as Moses Maimonides and Saint Thomas Aquinas, would receive the honorific May God be pleased with him or ﵁. (See again Schuon’s ﵁ Stations of Wisdom, and Renaud Fabbri’s “The Milk of the Virgin: The Prophet, the Saint and the Sage.”)

  The only issue with this second approach is that Friedrich Nietzsche and Søren Kierkegaard might be denied honorifics. Although, see for example Julius Evola’s Revolt Against the Modern World, where Evola seems amenable to Nietzsche’s passion but not his metaphysic (my words). Schuon ﵁ seems to write similarly about Nietzsche in To Have a Center. Regarding Kierkegaard, Schuon ﵁ seems sadly antagonistic towards the former in his “Letter on Existentialism” in The Essential Frithjof Schuon.

  Since I feel deeply influenced by Kierkegaard, and while I am less familiar with Nietzsche, but have recently come to regard him more positively, I would not feel comfortable denying them honorifics.

  A third approach is to simply append an honorific after every historical figure.

  The updated article goes with the first approach! And Allāh ﷾ knows best! Back to article