Home (theory of the ego death and rebirth experience)
Metaphor in Western Esotericism
Contents
Are high Alchemy & all esoteric
systems about no-free-will?
Western Esotericism based on
entheogen experience of no-free-will/no-separate-self
Western Esotericism general
information
Western Esotericism, Amanita
Grail/esotericism as a threat to the Church
Western Esotericism: A Real Mixed
Bag
Esoteric metaphorical symbolism:
silly or ergonomic?
Inactivated esotericism, activated
esotericism, entheogens as activator
Occult hermetic sciences: magic,
astrology, alchemy
Plotinus, Neoplatonism, and
Hermeticism
Plato cave, Virtue, make king,
divine rescue, falling into a well, secret king
Book list: History of Magic. Esotericism book overviews
Esotericism
in general is a more or less efficient expression and embodiment of entheogen
determinism philosophy-religion -- often heavily encoded, indirect, roundabout,
obscured; whereas it's time for a clear explanation of the encoding, with a
direct, straightforward, non-metaphorical presentation of the core ideas.
Most
religious-philosophical esoteric systems are dark, distorted, obscured
expressions of entheogen determinism, now at last explicitly systematized
ergonomically. Alchemy, for example,
obscures as much as revealing -- but underneath it all is entheogen determinism.
I'm now
pleased with the full presence of "trans-determinism divine
transcendent" ideas (moving from freewill to determinism to
trans-determinism); this movement is certainly present in some leading
religious systems.
At the
moment my main problem is that some religious-esoteric-philosophical systems,
from what I've read so far, don't clearly predominantly plug into the
timeless-determinism or "transcendence of block-universe determinism"
model.
Alchemy is
clearly about purification and transformation of the psyche, and includes concepts
of danger, protection, and levels of purification, but is this purification
definitely centered on repudiation of freewill thinking, in alchemy? What exactly, on the surface or underneath
at core, is the nature of the "purification and transformation of the
psyche" in alchemy? More study of
esoteric systems is needed to find how densely present are such hooks into the
entheogen determinism explanatory framework.
I expect
to easily find *some* hooks for a determinism-centered conception of alchemy,
but are there enough hooks to *generalize* that alchemy's "real
meaning" is centered around the experience of frozen-time block-universe
determinism?
Astrological
ascent through the sphere of the fixed stars clearly hooks into the determinism
model of religion easily well enough to generalize, saying that the real,
ultimate meaning of astrological ascent is the encounter with frozen-time
cosmic determinism. Does alchemy,
magic, or gematria have such clear central concern with determinism? What are the other leading esoteric systems,
and what is the evidence that *they* are *centrally* concerned with frozen-time
cosmic determinism?
I have a
perfect track record of identifying dense allusions to entheogens and
determinism in myth-religion-philosophy so far; as soon as I've thought to look
for confirmation, I've easily found it; the interpretive framework I've pulled
together has proven to *work* as an explanatory system for identifying the real
concern of myth-religion. So I have
strong reason to expect further confirmation of the entheogen determinism
theory of esotericism-myth-philosophy-religion -- confirmation of the entheogen
determinism theory of the perennial philosophy.
Given that
the perennial philosophy is actually centrally concerned with entheogen
determinism, it follows that to the extent that any particular esoteric system
is authentic, authentically embodying the perennial philosophy, that esoteric
system must by definition be actually centrally concerned with entheogen
determinism. Perennial philosophy is
entheogen determinism is the authentic version of any esoteric system.
This
implies that alchemy either has a version that is centrally concerned with
entheogen determinism, or else all versions of alchemy are inauthentic, posing
as expression of the perennial philosophy, but falling short of being an
authentic expression of the perennial philosophy. This standard of judgement connects with my distinction between
"what the sages meant" vs. "what the sages meant to mean, and
ought to have meant".
Versions
of esotericism are authentic *to the extent* that they express the perennial
philosophy, which is none other than entheogen determinism. The question of "is Alchemy centrally
about entheogen determinism" is essentially the question, "Is Alchemy
substantially authentic, or not?"
Like
today's entheogen scholarship, which is completely weak in terms of philosophy
and metaphysics, Alchemy may amount to nothing but introductory level:
"take entheogens, try to purify the mind to some extent" -- but never
reaching gold perfection, of encountering and grappling with frozen-time cosmic
determinism. Talk of reaching gold
perfection of the psyche, without concern with timeless determinism and
no-free-will, is empty talk, unable to deliver on its general stated goal.
*Have* the
most advanced alchemists reached the gold state of experientially realizing
no-free-will? If not, Alchemy as
practiced has been inauthentic and ineffective, which wouldn't be surprising.
A main
issue is, did people actually do a single system of esoteric initiation *as an
isolated system*, or were all high Alchemists also high Astrologers and high
Magicians?
Has all
Alchemy as practiced, been restricted to merely low (vulgar, introductory,
Literalist) Alchemy, and at best, tepid mid-level Alchemy that knows a bit
about entheogens, but little about no-free-will? Has Alchemy *often* delivered on its claim to provide high
esotericism, which is the skilled repeated use of visionary plants to fully
realize no-free-will? Is this concern
with no-free-will well-represented in the metaphors constituting the outer,
esoteric shell and clothing of Alchemy?
In
general, premodern thinking (such as Alchemy) was strong in its use of the
mystic altered state, but weak at conceptual systematization of the
experiential insights thus encountered.
Esoteric systems such as Alchemy were not intended as modern-type
direct, explicit systematizations of the perennial philosophy. Rather, such systems were fully oriented
around the experiences.
To have
the most profound experience, one needs the most developed theory; and to have
the most developed theory, one needs the most profound experience. Falling short on one half certainly
restricts the other half -- there can be no talk of "forget theory, experience
is important" or "forget experience, theoretical systematization is
important". Both halves are fully
important, and each must be seriously developed to the fullest.
Premoderns
had the experiences and observations and experiential insights, but poor
explicit systematization; they basically relied entirely on the mystic altered
state itself, and only relied on conceptual systematization in the indirect
form of myth, the only kind of exception being Plotinus. The modern approach usually errs toward
attempting to rely far too much on explicit systematization alone, with far too
little use of the mystic altered state.
But
potentially, the modern approach can be repaired, so that a full, serious,
skilled use of the mystic altered state can occur, together with a full,
serious, direct and clear systematization of perennial philosophy, with both
experience and theory integrated.
The
chapter "Spiritual Alchemy" by Karen-Claire Voss, in the book Gnosis
and Hermeticism, offers ample hooks for the timeless-determinism centered model
of religion and perennial philosophy.
Voss's
*main core* characterization of Alchemy is in terms of a change of experience
and conception -- exactly matching my emphasis on the two halves, of experience
and theory (which I combine as 'experiential insight') -- regarding
"causality, time, and self-other relationship", a list which is
closely like my list of what factors are systemically revised during
enlightenment: the mental worldmodel regarding time, will, self, control, and world;
and basically matching my construct of discovering
"no-free-will/no-separate-self".
Voss' core
thesis amounts to saying that enlightenment in Alchemy is "a revision of
conception and experience regarding one's own personal causal agency in
time", which is similar to my portrayal of the perennial philosophy and
all authentic embodiments of it as being centrally concerned with the encounter
with determinism.
The
chapter presents the "king" theme (I hold that in myth, 'king' means
initiate; that is, egoic will-controlling personal agency) and mentions the
idea that *God* chooses and wills to whom the alchemical knowledge is revealed
-- implying no-free-will, or strong predominance of the transcendent or the
ground of being over the individual power-wielding willing agent.
Gnosis and
Hermeticism from Antiquity to Modern Times
R. Van Den
Broek (Editor), Wouter Hanegraaff (Editor)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0791436128
1997
The Gnosis
issue on Alchemy had much less hooks for the timeless determinism model of
esotericism. The issue, as certainly
expected, contains lots of hooks for the entheogen theory of the perennial
philosophy, and for the alchemical path as a series of mind-changing
altered-state experiencing sessions.
Those are the easy areas -- finding determinism tie-ins is the
relatively hard part in applying the entheogen determinism theory to Alchemy,
but Voss came through almost ideally -- though without a paragraph focusing on
the will in particular.
Voss'
other writings may contain more information about the specifics of the
"changes in the conception and experience of causality, the self-other
relationship, and time" in Alchemy, that may even more directly tie into
the entheogen determinism model of the perennial philosophy.
I wonder
if Voss writes from an entheogen-informed background: that would lend authority
in certain respects, but would also raise the question of whether Voss' core
characterization of Alchemy comes from study of Alchemy, or was imported from
the general entheogen theory of religion/perennial tradition.
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Karen-Claire+Voss%22
http://www.google.com/search?&q=%22Karen-Claire+Voss%22+alchemy
Voss
apparently contributed to chapter 1 of:
Modern
Esoteric Spirituality
Antoine
Faivre (Editor), Jacob Needleman (Editor), Karen Voss (Editor)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0824514440
1992
Sample
pages available. Zosimos writes of the
book: "essays on: ancient and medieval esotericism and mysticism, Kabbalah
in the Renaissance, Paracelsus, Rosicrucianism, Jacob Boehme, Freemasonry,
nineteenth century esoteric movements, Rudolph Steiner, Theosophy, Rene Guenon
and Traditionalism, G. I. Gurdjieff, and C. G. Jung. A continuous link is
established from Pythagoreanism, hermeticism, NeoPlatonism, and Gnosticism
through the Middle Ages to the great mystics of Judaism, Christianity, and
Islam and on into the modern era. Nearly every ancient and medieval mystic in
these three major religions is discussed. Alchemy and natural science arose from
these ancient traditions and philosophies with a Romantic twist. From the
Jewish tradition of Kabbalism came the many hermetic Renaissance movements, for
at one time the Kabbalah was considered a forerunner of Christianity revealing
the Trinity. The German physician, Paracelsus, provided inspiration for the
German theosophist, Jacob Boehme and many other later followers of both. The
movements of Rosicrucianism, arising from the publication of a document
alleging the existence of a secret society by a Lutheran minister, and
Freemasonry, which adapted from its origins in medieval guilds to its modern
form based on Enlightenment philosophy, are thoroughly discussed in separate
essays."
Here is
Voss' article I discussed:
Spiritual
Alchemy: Interpreting Representative Texts and Images
http://www.istanbul-yes-istanbul.co.uk/alchemy/index.htm
Excerpts/quotes:
"...a
description of three characteristics that permit us to distinguish these two
types of alchemy (i.e., the experience and concept of the subject/object relation;
causality; and time) and second, a summary of changes that took place in an
alchemist’s conceptual model as the work progressed. [16] For the sake of
clarity and brevity, each of the three characteristics has been more or less
artificially separated from the other two, although in fact of course each is
related to the others in exceedingly complex ways.
Here are
the three characteristics:
1.
Subject/object relation. Both types of
alchemy exhibit a characteristic experience and concept of the subject/object
relation. In material alchemy one
conceives reality as an object completely removed from oneself, outside
oneself; hence, what we call the self is the subject, what we call the world is
the object, and the boundary between subject and object is static, fixed. In spiritual alchemy, however, one finds
reality to be a living system in which one participates, to which one
contributes, and in which the boundaries between subject and object are fluid.
2. Causality.
Both types of alchemy exhibit a characteristic experience and concept of
causality. Material alchemy is
characterized by what one can call substance or mechanistic causality. This is the kind of causality associated
with a "means/ends" approach to reality, one that holds that reality is
comprised of only one level and that all of its elements can be manipulated as
one manipulates a machine--for example, a lawn mower. Spiritual alchemy,
however, is characterized by what one can call process causality, the kind that
Giordano Bruno had in mind when writing about the "inner artificer".
[17] At the level of
conceptualization, the operative causality in spiritual alchemy is understood
to possess an infinite number of gradations of the movement from potency to
act, which can be modeled (albeit inadequately) [18] as a spectrum marked at
one end by absolute potentialization and at the other by absolute
actualization. [19]
3. Time.
The theme of the acceleration of time in alchemy has been discussed at
length by Eliade, and I do not intend to do more than mention it here. [20] The
basic idea is that telluric processes that took aeons to accomplish within the
earth could be radically accelerated in the alchemical laboratory. Here I simply wish to call attention to a
contrast that can be perceived between the conception of time in material
alchemy and in spiritual alchemy. In
material alchemy one generally finds a conventional conception of time as being
comprised of three discrete "parts":
past, present, future. Moreover,
time is considered irreversible; it flows in one direction only. In spiritual alchemy one finds a much more
subtle conception of time in which these three discrete parts are only
apparently separated from each other.
In spiritual alchemy, time is not experienced as irreversible, but
reversible; not only that, but in spiritual alchemy the "movement" of
time is not so much a movement as a mode of perception, [21] and thus goes far
beyond being something which can be conceived of in linear terms, as having a
forward or backward motion that could be modeled as occurring on an imaginary
line.
I have
described these three characteristics for the sake of completion, but in this
paper, most of the emphasis will be on the first two.
Having
outlined these three basic characteristics, I will now give a summary of the
changes that took place in the alchemist’s conceptual model during the course
of the work. The conceptual model with
which both material and spiritual alchemy began was linear. The goal of the alchemical process was located
at the end of a linear series ...
...the
hieros gamos is itself illustrative of the changing conception and experience
of the subject/object relation, causality, and time.
... Seeing
that the king is worthy of this, Morienus tells him that he has achieved
initiation, and agrees to instruct him, emphasizing that nothing can be
achieved if it is counter to divine will.
He speaks of how God "chose to select certain ones to seek after
the knowledge he had established,"
Michael
wrote:
>>>Does
alchemy, magic, or gematria have such clear central concern with
determinism? What are the other leading
esoteric systems, and what is the evidence that *they* are *centrally*
concerned with frozen-time cosmic determinism?
James
Jomeara wrote:
>>A
few years ago I tumbled across what I modestly consider to be A. Crowley's key
slight of hand.
>>I
must confess, with some trepidation, that it's always puzzled me why so many
people, some of whom seem very smart (for example, Robert Anton Wilson) seem to
find something of value in Crowleyanity.
Frankly, I find his writings pretentious and unreadable, his life
obviously that of a fraud. Unlike his
many devotees, I find Colin Wilson's book (not the chapter in The Occult) to be
the *most* plausible and positive that could be justified.
>>So
one day, while reading something (wish I could remember what; from The Portable
Dragon? Yoga for Yellowbellies? Magick without Tears?) it suddenly hit me.
>>See,
magick "works" only if the magician can contact, and identify
himself, with his True Will, or the Holy Guardian Angel, or whatever. On closer inspection, however, the True Will
turns out to be The Will of God. At
which point it should be obvious that if this is done, then magic becomes
operative in the trivial sense that what the magickian wants (*now* if not when
he began) is what God wants, which is what *is* anyway. QED.
>>Or,
as Voss says of alchemy: "Nothing can be achieved if it is contrary to the
divine will."
>>"Magick"
is just a convoluted, boring, annoying and time-wasting way to achieve what you
*really* want, in the Socratic or Epicurean way, by conforming your will to
God's will.
>>Crowley
spent his whole life trying to *spook* his fundamentalist parents, who always
used the phrase "God willing," by creating a spooky costume
concealing (to the extent that there *is* something under the sheet) good old
Reformed theology.
>>"Do
what thou wilt" = "Thy will be done"
I agree
with your assessment. It's good to see
other people recognizing the same patterns and implications; we confirm and
build up the interpretation's plausibility, and everyone contributes by adding
angles and details.
After
seeing these patterns repeatedly across systems of esotericism, we reach the
point where we can say that the same hooks are present as a commonality to be
found to some extent in every system of esotericism and perennial
philosophy. This is not to say that all
esoteric practitioners agree with this systematization or with each other, by
any means. We must have a mechanism and
strategy by which we can excuse the diverse disagreements and disparities: all
esoteric systems, taken broadly, include fully adequate hooks into a
no-free-will systematization of the perennial philosophy.
All
religious, high-philosophy, and esoteric systems expressing the perennial
philosophy are more or less concerned with no-free-will. The ideal version of any system encoding the
perennial philosophy is rich with hooks into no-free-will. Practitioners who disagree that no-free-will
is interesting or that it is an essential or the essential concern of a given
esoteric system, are held by this theory to be "inauthentic"
representatives of the tradition.
The
important thing is that a system is "concerned with" or
"concerned around" no-free-will; all legitimate systems take
no-free-will as a key problem, though they may or may not set their goal as
transcending no-free-will.
The
question remains: *why bother* forming an *indirect* expression -- really a
*riddle* -- rather than just explicitly delivering the system of
enlightenment? What are the excuses or
reasons or justifications for *only* providing the riddle, without providing
also the explicit solution to the riddle?
My
systematization and explanation of transcendent knowledge is the entheogen
determinism theory of the perennial philosophy. This theory contains the solution to this class of riddle and
metaphorical encoding, but earlier than that, my explanatory system of
transcendent knowledge first aimed at clearly formulating the explicit direct
systematization of transcendent knowledge.
There is
nothing wrong with inventing an allegorical metaphorical encoded riddle-like
expression and embodiment of transcendent knowledge, unless you leave out the
solution to the riddle and practically nobody is able to figure it out.
Magic,
resurrection-religion, alchemy, and astrology all use the technique of making
attractive popular promises: granting magic power, bodily immortality, ability
to create gold, and the ability to predict and read-off the future from the
stars -- and underneath this popular attraction is the actual product
delivered: peak altered-state phenomena and metaphysical enlightenment.
There are
perceptible patterns running across all forms of esotericism; the different
systems all have the same kind of vibe: they all have tie-ins to no-free-will
that aren't obvious at first, and they all have magical thinking on the
surface, and they all have some sort of special drinking and eating if you look
carefully and consider the various versions of a given esoteric system. They all have tie-ins to the surrounding
religions and to the perennial philosophy -- these systems wouldn't be included
in the fairly good magazine Gnosis if they didn't have tie-ins to experiential
spirituality.
Consider
how ergonomic systems are: the most ergonomic would have popular attraction and
metaphors and explanations of the metaphors, and simple, direct, and clear
explicit instructions for triggering the mystic altered state of loose
cognition that enables comprehending the metaphor and the direct experiential
insights.
The
leading practitioners of any one system of esoteric knowledge was often deeply
involved in *many* systems of esotericism and religion, though it's unclear how
many of the leading practitioners correctly identified the central concern as
grappling with no-free-will through a series of entheogenic initiation
sessions. It's certain that some did
and it's certain that some didn't.
Given the
fact of lack of uniformity, and the fact of disagreement among practitioners
about the key principles, as well as disparities between different metaphorical
systems, a theory of what it's really all about must inherently pick some
criteria of authenticity, some means of judging what the better and worse
conceptions and versions of an esoteric system or religion were.
Some
system of assessing the degree of profundity of any particular version of an
esoteric system or religion is needed -- I judge them on the basis of ergonomic
usefulness toward experiencing and comprehending no-free-will.
Gnosis
issue 43 letter to the editor in Forum, "All About the Watchtower":
>>The
angel Ave [said] Man has been "bound by the stars as with a
chain." The universe --
represented by the Four Great Watchtowers in magick -- is our prison, at least
until we wake up to Eternal Reality.
[The universe] is bound, by fate, karma, necessity, until... man becomes
Man, and becomes the master of himself.
-- Kevin
Oliver
http://www.lumen.org/issue_contents/contents43.html
Case
closed; it is established. High
magic/esotericism/alchemy/astrology are about discovering the experience of
block-universe determinism, and in some sense transcending it. Magic is about will, but the higher
transcendent will, not mundane free will.
Inevitable
apocalypse, judgement, etc. is the same -- a system of metaphorically
describing mystic-state experience, typically via visionary plants.
Proposal:
Western Esotericism is all concerned first of all with the entheogenic
experience of no-free-will/no-separate-self and related experiential insights
of the intense mystic altered state.
Below is
some generic representative information about the new academic study of Western
Esotericism. I am completely satisfied
with my model of the Hellenistic era as being an integrated confluence of high
philosophy, mystic experiencing, mythic allusion to mystic-state phenomena, and
the intense entheogenic mystic altered state as being the definitive fountainhead
and foundation of Hellenistic myth-religion-philosophy.
A powerful
key connector is the standard banqueting tradition, which connects Jewish
feasts, Christian agape meals, mystery-religion sacred meals, and
philosophical-religious symposiums -- all based on 'wine', meaning a highly
potent visionary plant beverage.
My
research trajectory was:
Try to
recognize the cybernetic theory of ego transcendence in Christian
myth-religion;
To do
that, try to identify themes of entheogens in conjunction with no-free-will in
the New Testament;
To do
that, study the following themes (one led to another):
o Hellenistic mystery religions as being based
on experiencing and transcending no-free-will/cosmic determinism through
entheogenic sacred meals;
o Hellenistic-era sacred meals;
o Hellenistic philosophy and Jewish scripture
and Hellenistic myth all as based on allusions to entheogens and no-free-will;
o World religion and world mythology as
alluding to the no-free-will experience through entheogens;
o All premodern (classic and medieval)
myth-religion as alluding to the no-free-will experience through entheogens.
This
radically increased scope of what used to be called merely "the entheogen
theory of the origin of Christianity", or "Did the original inner circle
of Jesus use hallucinogenic mushrooms?" (as the benighted put it) now
raises the question:
Can Clark
Heinrich's Amanita interpretation of Alchemy apply to the entirety of Western
Esoteric traditions? Were they all
essentially based on entheogens and on indirect, metaphorical description of
the phenomena of the intense mystic altered state, including ego death and
resetting, the experience of no-free-will and the resumption of practical
personal control after its breakdown, the experience of timelessness/frozen
time, and the experience of no-free-will/no-separate-self?
Death and
rebirth are definitely present in Freemasonry, while revitalization and
elevation of personal kingship/controllership is present in Alchemy.
Those
schools alone, combined with my complete success at recognizing entheogens and
such mystic-state phenomena throughout Hellenistic/Jewish/Christian culture
from Alexander to Constantine and the Church Fathers, combined with Dan
Merkur's revealing of entheogens in Philo and Bernard and other leading
mystics, make this fantastic wild conjecture actually stand a very strong
chance of being right, of identifying the essence of Western Esotericsm as the
use of entheogens to loosen cognition and experience
no-free-will/no-separate-self.
Other
evidence making this thesis plausible is provided by Mexican retablo paintings
(Catholic icons from an entheogen-based culture), per the Datura-Lily article
in Entheos #2.
In short,
the real nature of the Perennial Philosophy is the use of visionary plants to
induce the experience of no-free-will/no-separate-self and related experiential
insights of the intense mystic altered state.
Official Theology is based on Mystic Theology, which is an elaborate
quasi-rational systematization of the experiences of the intense entheogenic
mystic altered state, even if entheogens are largely suppressed, leaving a
floating husk devoid of the intense experiencing that inspired it.
That would
be like a Heavy Rock band that creates a series of Acid Rock albums, including
the standard lyric techniques of allusion, without being aware of the effects
of acid. Or like a debased Attic
tragedy play that "has nothing to do with Dionysus".
Similarly,
Esotericism is the use of elaborate symbolic systems to embody and convey the
principles of the Perennial Philosophy -- these elaborate symbolic systems
"come from" the experiences and experiential insights of the
entheogenic intense mystic altered state, but due to the nature of rational
systematization, the husk of the elaborate system remains visible and present
even where the entheogenic altered state is forgotten -- that is how
esotericism has often remained in place even bereft of the whole point and
inspiration of it all, actual use of visionary plants to activate and ignite
and bring to life the elaborate dead husk of quasi-rational systematization.
Scholars
agree that the Western esoteric systems generally hearken back to ancient
wisdom traditions -- which I have recently revealed as all being essentially,
originally, basically, and classically entheogen-inspired systematizations of
mystic-state phenomena.
In
ancient, medieval, or modern times, where the esoteric system was in place
without the actual use of visionary plants, that may have often happened, but
that doesn't disprove the entheogen theory -- it bolsters it, because such a
state ought to be considered merely a debased, superficial, cargo-cult, and
truly superstitious travesty of the actual authentic esoteric systems.
The best
of the esotericists, mystics, and Philosophers agree with this view, and those
people are the *best*, whether or not they are the *most* (percentage of the
population of practitioners). The fact
that much esotericism lacked the use of entheogens merely confirms the accepted
idea that much esotericism is bogus and superstitious. There are 3 levels of understanding of
esotericism or esoteric systems, in general:
1.
Literalism, lacking entheogens
2.
Allegorism, lacking entheogens (replaced by
"visualization/meditation/contemplation")
3.
Allegorism, having entheogens
Jungian
Psychology is level 2, equivalent to what I've called "mid-level
religion", along with popular Western Buddhist meditation and common
"esoteric Christianity".
Although most people might use the most debased reading of esoteric
systems (#1) or an only half-correct (allegorical but merely ordinary-state)
reading (#2), interpretation or understanding #3 still remains the real deal,
the only really essentially correct reading.
Even if
all the individuals who read using filter #3 are eliminated, filter #3 remains
the correct reading -- even if no one remains to vote for and advocate and
affirm that #3 is the ultimate correct reading. I'd almost say that #3 is the ultimately correct interpretation
even if no one ever believed it -- thus I repudiate the reader-response theory
of hermeneutics.
Scholars
mistakenly assume that half of people read esoteric systems using the
"superstitious" filter #1 and half of people read esoteric systems
using the "metaphorical/symbolic" filter #2, with practically none
using the "entheogenic-descriptive" filter #3. Typical scholars treat filter #3 as
incidental rather than central and ultimate.
A
conservative Christian bookstore supplies worldview #1, or level of
understanding #1.
A New Age
(http://www.eastwestbooks.com) or Metaphysical bookstore
(http://www.questbooks.net/categories.cfm) supplies worldview #2, or level of
understanding #2.
Drugwar.com
(http://www.drugwar.com/psychedelicbooks.htm) supplies worldview #3, or level
of understanding #3. Worldview #3 used
to be mainly serviced by Mind Books, now defunct
(http://www.egodeath.com/mindbooks/TITLS.HTM).
One thing
Huston Smith can be praised for is that his book on entheogens in religion is
found in the Christianity section of bookstores. If his book told the full truth -- that entheogens are more
authentic and classic than official mysticism -- the book wouldn't been
permitted in the Christianity section.
He's been
a strong advocate of entheogens, as strong as possible while continuing to tell
the lie that non-entheogenic contemplation is the original paradigm and
entheogenic "pseudo-mysticism" the mere also-ran.
Resources
for the general study (not specifically entheogenic) of Western Esotericism:
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22western+esotericism%22
- 1550 hits
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22western+esoterism%22
- 62 hits
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22western+esotericism%22+%22religious+experience%22
- 106 hits, little value.
http://www.kheper.net/topics/Hermeticism/Hermeticism.htm
-- "Defining Hermeticism is not easy. It is a little like trying to define
religion, or art. One could say that Hermeticism is the Wisdom Tradition of the
West, an esoteric tradition not necessarily limited to any one religion or
mystical path, and that embraces both the theoretical and the practical. The
following are two overlapping yet quite different approaches to and definitions
of Hermeticism; the magickal/occult and the academic. Of course, Hermeticism is
not necessarily limited to these definitions."
History of
Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents [= Western Esoterism]
http://www.amsterdamhermetica.com
That site
has a dictionary and overviews. Uses
damn script links, preventing extracting internal URLs. My conceptual summaries of some key entries:
Neoplatonism
-- A religious and philosophical system reconciling platonic traditions with
Greek thought (Neopythagoreanism, Peripatetism, Stoicism), the Orphic
fragments, Hesiodic and Homeric poetry, and theurgic ritual practices, as just
so many outward expressions of a unique wisdom.
Gnosticism
-- Gnosis, which is supra-rational salvational knowledge by virtue of which one
can escape from the material cosmos and be reunited with one's divine origin.
Hermeticism
-- Teachings of the Corpus Hermeticum, about the way to attaining true
knowledge of God, the world, and man.
Jung --
Combined esoteric motifs, Psychology, and scientific thinking. Covered spiritualism, gnosticism, alchemy
and Asian religions. Had idiosyncratic interpretations. Identified religious and occult practices
with psychological processes, establishing contemporary common views about
spirituality.
Traditionalism
-- The theory that all major religious systems are the manifestations of a
single primordial religious essence.
Usually includes an absolutist critique of modernity, including modern
esoteric systems such as Spiritualism and Theosophy.
New Age --
Utopian communities and movements revolving around revealed messages from
“spiritual entities” and presenting theosophical doctrines. Includes late 20th Century astrology, the
tarot, positive thinking, transpersonal psychology, Jungianism, and Eastern
teachings.
>Gnosis
magazine
http://www.lumen.org/back_issue_list/back_issue_list.html
http://www.gnosismagazine.com
>The
Hermetic Academy, a related scholarly organization of the American Academy of
Religion, publishes HERMES, a quarterly newsletter dedicated to providing
information about what is currently going on in the field of esotericism. ...
>http://www.istanbul-yes-istanbul.co.uk
>http://www.hermetic-academy.com
Some
papers are available for download -- ok, make that 1 paper. It would be easier if people would use HTML
and normal URLs.
http://www.amsterdamhermetica.nl/upload/ArticleUpload/115_some%20.doc
HTML
version, with illustrations:
http://www.esoteric.msu.edu/Hanegraaff.html
SOME
REMARKS ON THE STUDY OF WESTERN ESOTERICISM
Wouter J.
Hanegraaff
The
academic study of western esotericism is one of those new developments in the
study of religions which may strike the casual observer as having appeared
almost overnight, due to the fact that its gradual development over the past
decades is easily overlooked . Like any newcomer, the discipline tends to evoke
curiosity as well as suspicion; and such reactions are all the more natural
because the very term "esotericism" (like the related term
"occultism") is a particularly loaded one. This article intends to
provide a brief introduction to the current state of "the study of
esotericism"; and special attention will be given to why it is important
for students in this field - even those whose approach is strictly
historical/descriptive - to give some attention to issues of a methodological
and theoretical nature.
What is
understood by "Western Esotericism"?
The
substantive "esotericism", like the adjective "esoteric",
carries different meanings in different contexts, and this is a major cause of
confusion (not only among outsiders, but even among specialists) about the
nature of the discipline. No less than five meanings may be distinguished in
current usage, only the last of which refers to the subject of the present
article . (1) "Esotericism" is commonly used by booksellers and
publishers as a synonym of "the occult"; in this case, it functions
as a generic term for a diffuse collection of writings concerned with the
paranormal, the occult sciences, various exotic wisdom traditions, contemporary
New Age spiritualities, and so on . (2) The adjective "esoteric"
(perhaps somewhat more frequently than the substantive) may be understood as
referring to secret teachings and the "discipline of the arcane" with
its distinction between initiates and non-initiates . (3) Within the discourse
of the "perennialist" or "Traditionalist" school of
religious studies, the esoteric is a metaphysical concept referring to the
"transcendent unity" of exoteric religions . (4) In
"religionist" approaches to religious studies, esotericism tends to
be used as a near synonym of gnosis in the universalizing sense of the word (i.e.,
covering various religious phenomena which emphasize experiential rather than
rational and dogmatic modes of knowing, and which favour mythical/symbolic over
discursive forms of expression) . (5) From a strictly historical perspective,
western (!) esotericism is used as a container concept encompassing a complex
of interrelated currents and traditions from the early modern period up to the
present day, the historical origin and foundation of which lies in the
syncretistic phenomenon of Renaissance "hermeticism" (in the broad
and inclusive sense of the word) . Western esotericism thus understood includes
the so-called "occult philosophy" of the Renaissance and its later
developments; Alchemy, Paracelsianism and Rosicrucianism; Christian and
post-Christian Kabbalah; Theosophical and Illuminist currents; and various
occultist and related developments during the 19th and 20th century .
Boundary
Dispute
The
academic study of western esotericism discussed in the present article is based
upon the fifth and final meaning: it investigates a series of specific
interrelated historical currents in modern and contemporary western culture,
which have largely been neglected or disregarded by earlier generations.
However, the relationship of the discipline to approaches linked to the four
other meanings of esotericism is a complicated one. ..."
I
previously scanned across world myth-religion successfully, easily mapping my
core model of transcendent experiential insight to the mythic-mystic allegory
found in each major religion. The
"World Religions" field often has poor coverage of dead religions
such as Hellenistic Mystery-Religions.
An even
more surprising blindspot is the lack of coverage of Western Esotericism, which
is about as enormous and varied as the major world religions. I'm finding that the more I start looking
into Western Esoteric schools, they are mapping to my core model of
mystic-state experiential insights just as quickly and naturally as did World
Religions.
I'm just
starting to study the books and Web resources.
Here are a few more links, toward possibly my creating a resource page
about cybernetic entheogenic ego transcendence as the backbone of Western
Esotericism.
http://www.phanes.com/alexandria.html
-- Alexandria journal of Western esotericism, issues 1-5 so far. You can see the article titles here. I haven't seen such an insanely diverse set
of topics under one heading since the field of Cybernetics, such as the book:
Cybernetics
of Cybernetics
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0964704412
Typical of
the field of Cybernetics that caused its dissipation: "Cybernetics and
Human Knowing is a ... multi- and interdisciplinary journal ... devoted to ...
self-organizing processes of information in human knowing ... a nondisciplinary
approach ... the concept of self-reference ... the meaning of cognition and
communication; our understanding of organization and information in human,
artificial and natural systems; and our understanding ... within the natural
and social sciences, humanities, information and library science, and in social
practices as design, education, organisation, teaching, therapy, art,
management and politics."
____________________________
Esoterica
electronic journal
http://www.esoteric.msu.edu/Contents.html
(now covers issues 5 through 1)
http://www.esoteric.msu.edu/Archive.html
(now covers 4 through 1 with illus.)
Includes
the following articles, for example:
"Stages
of Ascension in Hermetic Rebirth"
Dan
Merkur
http://www.esoteric.msu.edu/Merkur.html
1999
I found it
easy to nod yes, yes, yes in recognition, making sense of this
myth-religion-philosophy in terms of the Core Theory I've pulled together,
about mystic experiential insight.
What is
Esoteric? Methods in the Study of
Western Esotericism
Arthur
Versluis
http://www.esoteric.msu.edu/VolumeIV/Methods.htm
2002
Mysticism,
and the Study of Esotericism (Methods in the Study of Esotericism, Part II)
Arthur
Versluis
http://www.esoteric.msu.edu/VolumeV/Mysticism.htm
2003
Western
Esotericism, Eastern Spirituality, and the Global Future
Lee
Irwin
http://www.esoteric.msu.edu/VolumeIII/HTML/Irwin.html
2001
Might be
relevant to mapping the Egodeath theory to Eastern
philosophy-religion-mysticism -- to Eastern Gnosis.
Atmospheric
intro to the field of Western Esotericism:
http://www.techgnosis.com/faivre.html
Hermes
on the Seine
The
Esoteric Scholarship of Antoine Faivre
by Erik
Davis
1996
Imagine
you're a bookish paleface wandering through the stained and musty halls of
Western civilization, sick to death of the endless tales of bloody conquests,
heinous Churchman, and the ominous march of abstract and manipulative reason.
Just when you're ready to cash in you chips and join the barbarians and
bodhisattvas at the gate, you stumble across some moldering sidedoor, thick
with sigils and glyphs and glints of otherworldly light. The door opens
unbeckoned, and you stumble past animated statues of Egyptian gods into
basements packed with arcana: astrological diagrams, alchemical flowcharts,
magical cook-books and Hermetic texts, organized not by the Dewey decimal
system but by the blazing rainbow filing system of the Kabbalistic Tree of
Life. Isaac Newton's alchemical library is here, along with the hermetic troves
of Breton and Blake, Walter Benjamin and Umberto Eco. You wander like a half-blind
Argentinian sage through this iconic museum, each tome vibrating with its
neighbors until the texts become a hieroglyphic hall of mirrors that reflect
anew yourself and the world that made you. ...
Studies of
Western esotericism are currently plagued by the usual combination of the
"ordinary state of consciousness" fallacy and the
"nonentheogenic meditation/contemplation" fallacy. The raw bulk of Western esoterism might be
limited to the ordinary state or nonentheogenic meditation, but the timeless
origin, inspiration, and fountainhead, and most efficient trigger, is the use
of visionary plants.
Periodicals
with a heavy focus on Western esotericism include:
http://www.lumen.org/back_issue_list/back_issue_list.html
-- full tables of contents
http://www.parabola.org/magazine/backlist.html
-- full tables of contents
http://www.theosophical.org/theosophy/questmagazine
-- all articles are online back to 1999, but the decades of previous issues
aren't listed, and the page doesn't say if back issues are available.
Online
articles about gnosis and technology - Erik Davis:
http://www.techgnosis.com/cargo.html
- Music, science fiction, television, subculture
http://www.techgnosis.com/corpus.html
- Digital mysticism and the religion of technology
http://www.techgnosis.com/snakes.html
- Floormaps of the Metaphysical Supermarket -- most of his entheogen articles
are in this category
http://www.techgnosis.com/mech.html
- Science, technology, cyberculture
There is
an online shrine to Dionysus at http://www.hermeticfellowship.org, with Mission
http://www.hermeticfellowship.org/HFMission.html --
http://www.hermeticfellowship.org/Dionysion/Dionysion.html -- with appropriate
coverage of entheogens. This site
appears useful for Western Esotericism resources.
Proposal:
Western Esotericism is all concerned first of all with the entheogenic
experience of no-free-will/no-separate-self and related experiential insights
of the intense mystic altered state.
That is
the simplest viable theory that unites the broadest sweep of systems.
It
explains why the Amanita-grail was such a threat to the Catholic church, and
why visionary-plant using witches were a threat -- but for the church to feel
threatened by the common discovery of the true entheogenic meaning of the
Eucharist and salvation, individuals in the church must have been aware of the
true entheogenic meaning, and must have realized how precarious their attempted
monopoly on meaning was, and thereby how precarious their monopoly on doling
out salvation at a price, as a franchise operation.
When
members of the Church rediscovered the true entheogenic nature of the idea of
Eucharistic regeneration, such as in Mexico, given that they wanted to retain a
monopoly on access to religious salvation/enlightenment, they could only react
by demonizing the entheogen and reiterating and further inflating their claim
of the potency of the obviously impotent official placebo Eucharist.
Firmly
committed strategically to a placebo sacrament as part of the financially
profitable monopolistic salvation franchise, they were handicapped: they knew
that making the Eucharist entheogenic would make it more potent and compelling,
but that people would abandon the intermediary franchise scheme, so returning
to and openly admitting the entheogenic eucharist was not an option.
Instead,
they further piled on P.R. verbiage trumpeting how potent and essential the
church's placebo Eucharist was -- all talk, more and more talk, more and more
theology of transubstantiation, and ever more secretive awareness that talk was
merely a cover for hiding the deliberate withholding of the active
Eucharist. They had to shape the
liturgy in the fullest awareness of what it ought to be -- entheogenic in form
and in doctrine, but not in official actuality.
Grail as
true psychoactive Eucharist, represented by Amanita, is a viable solution to
all of Richard Smoley's themes below.
It combines the themes of the regenerating blood of Christ, threat to
the official phony Church, purification of the psyche/heart, true valid
discipleship and Magdalene line of gnostic authority, true valid kingship, and
so on.
http://www.lumen.org/intros/intro51.html
-- excerpts:
the word
"grail" seems to come from the Old French gradale or graal, and often
simply means a large serving-dish. ... The holy man sustains and refreshes his
life with a single Mass wafer. So sacred a thing is the grail, and he himself
is so spiritual, that he needs no more for his sustenance." The most striking thing about this tale is
its dreamlike nature. Like a dream, it seems to lead us toward a number of
different meanings, none of which entirely exhausts its power. ... the Grail
legends proper arose at the precise moment in history when the Catholic Church
was formulating the doctrine of transubstantiation. The idea that the Grail
contained the Real Presence of Christ must have been very much in the minds of
Chrétien and the authors of other Grail romances. Indeed one way of
interpreting the Perceval is that the lance and grail in the procession are
images of the broken world of the Fall, which is to be redeemed in the
Eucharist; and the Perceval ends with an explanation of the mystery of the
Eucharist.
But there
have been many other interpretations and many other images for the Grail. In
the thirteenth-century Parsifal of Wolfram von Eschenbach, the Grail is not a
cup but a stone fallen from heaven ... Exillis resembles ... elixir ... A
precious stone, which took the place of a fire, lit the whole temple." A popular recent interpretation holds that
the Grail -- sometimes called the Sangreal or "Holy Grail" -- isn't
an object as such. Instead it refers to the sang real or "royal
blood." ... the true Sangreal is the lineage of Jesus Christ himself. His
children, borne through Mary Magdalene, eventually came to constitute the
Merovingian dynasty of the Frankish kingdom. The perpetuation of this bloodline
-- and its restoration to the throne of France -- has supposedly been the
preoccupation of a mysterious secret society ... which has enlisted the help of
various other secret societies throughout the centuries, including the Templars
and the Rosicrucians.
Though
there is something engaging about this idea, in the end it has always seemed to
me more like a rejected Indiana Jones script or the fantasy of obsessive French
monarchists than a plausible take on history. Robert Richardson's article in
this issue suggests that a monarchist fantasy is indeed what it is; he contends
that, by means of planting documents in French libraries, various intriguers
have made it seem as if the extinct Merovingian line not only survived to this
day but has a real connection to the lineage of Jesus Christ.
... what
is the Grail? ... there are to this day a number of candidates propounded as
the true Grail, it seems likely that the Grail is not just a mere object,
however sacred. ... that in us which strives to realize itself and become
conscious. ... the Grail is preeminently "the mystery of
regeneration." ... The chalice
represents the spiritual development of man. ... what is most important in the
Grail. It is certainly not a matter of a physical artifact. ... Nor can the
Grail mystery ultimately lie in the Eucharist; if it were, why would it have so
often seemed dangerous and heterodox to ecclesiastical opinion? ... the true mystery inherent in this myth:
that the Grail is the heart, illumined and awakened so that it may serve as a
receptacle for divine energies. To this inner transformation, even the
Eucharist is only a preliminary; hence the discomfort churchmen have always
felt around the concept.
...
"there are not many such people" who have awakened their inner
centers in this way, and "in general the process is a very difficult
one." ... it would explain one of the central themes in the Grail mythos:
that many are called but few are chosen. It would also explain why the few
successful candidates are those who are pure of heart, for the heart must be
pure before it can be illumined.
Just like
any known approach to spirituality or transcendent knowledge, Western
Esotericism is a mixture of truth, distortion, and irrelevance -- signal and
noise. Certainly a significant amount
of actual transformative mystic-state experiential insight is present in
Western Esotericism, but it is generally mixed with much error and irrelevance
as well.
It is easy
to find statements and positions I agree with in this field, and easy to find
statements, approaches, and positions that I think are dead wrong or highly
distorted. I aim to define a useful
model of transcendent knowledge of which all previous systems are more or less
distorted and inefficient expressions.
I am a
perennialist in that higher truth has always everywhere been present to some
extent, and a modernist in asserting that we have the technology now to achieve
a far greater extent of the presence or grasp of higher truth. Western Esotericism is crude and
inefficient, messy and overgrown, a dirty approach just as Amanita is a dirty
and inefficient entheogen compared to Stropharia Cubensis -- in need of a great
shave with Occham's razor.
Even if
the better esotericists and mystics held to determinism as I advocate, and an
anti-euhemerist (ahistoricity) view of mythic figures, and knowledge of visionary
plants, my "fourth heretical emphasis" of late is a kind of trump
over the premoderns: we modern theorists can do a vastly better, more ergonomic
job of *systematizing* esoteric experiential knowledge, gnosis.
The
ancients are bent on wasting everyone's time piling on irrelevancies; my goal
is to save people time by delivering the core gnosis on a platter and providing
helpful clear ties to ancient complexifications on side platters.
The
signal/noise ratio is practically the same in esoteric traditions as in the
Christian canon. Esotericism is no
improvement over Christianity, aside from providing a different color of noise
obscuring the signal. In all these
approaches, it's 99% noise, 1% signal, whether Kabbalah, magic, astrology,
alchemy, Islam, or Christianity. New
Age, too, has on the order of 1% efficiency, as does modern Western Buddhism.
At heart,
the modern cybernetic theory and model of transcendent knowledge isn't new at
all -- but in terms of packaging and systematic, explicit, streamlined
explanation, it's a night and day difference, between the many garbled and
irrelevance-cluttered expressions of transcendent experiential knowledge, and
this cybernetic self-control based theory.
Previous
and existing approaches provide enlightenment, at a level of on the order of 1%
efficiency. The theory expression such
as the Intro page http://www.egodeath.com/intro.htm is on the order of 90%
efficiency -- defined as, if you study these principles and triggers of mystic
experiencing for the duration of a college course, you will have enlightenment
as defined by this system, quickly and straightforwardly; ergonomically.
A good
measure is, how hard is it to pick up this system so well that you can teach
and propagate it at a 90% efficiency rate.
It's easy to learn and propagate this system, mitigating against any
"rare enlightened guru" effect.
>...
the web-site of an esoteric group ... "Commentary on Tree of Life"
and they espouse the allegorical "Mystery of Christ" according to a
Kabbalist methodology, but appropriately credits spirtual links to a variety of
religious esoteric traditions.
>It is
appallingly apocalyptic but retains its appeal with stunningly original and novel
insights; sort of "crack pot" meets careful research: highly negative
of Literalist institutional ecclesiasticism with profound global
consequences.
Literalist
apocalypticism is a regressive substitute for the true apocalypse, which is the
end of the egoic world and rise of transcendent awareness during ego death and
rebirth. The end of the world, second
coming, last judgement, and walking with the savior in the kingdom of Heaven
are interesting experiences.
>http://www.revelation2seven.org/index.html
>I
would be curious about observations, opinions of this site.
I will
take a look.
The crack
pot aspect of esotericism is annoying; some of the ancient philosophers
disliked it. But a purely abstract
theory of ego transcendence is unlikely to be relevant enough to be
interesting; what's needed is a pure theory of religious/philosophical
enlightenment that fully connects to the various traditional frameworks of
world religion and world mysticism, including Jewish mysticism, Christian
mysticism, and Buddhist mysticism (rather than the lower forms of all these
religions).
Loose cog
-- loose cognitive association binding during the mystic altered state -- is
essential to the theory of religious experiencing, but loose cog should avoid
crack pot.
I walk on
water, raise the dead, descend to the depths and ascend to the heights, turn
water into wine, cast out demons, sacrificed my first-born son to be reconciled
with transcendent truth, and experienced numerous reincarnations, but reject
crack pot magic thinking, which leads not to enlightenment.
I reject
all the religions: what is important is to solve them as puzzles and understand
transcendent knowledge in purely contemporary terms, first of all; stand firmly
within a system of contemporary terminology and conceptualization, and then
reach out to comprehend previous ways of thinking about the transcendent. Ultimately, sophisticated high Philosophy --
or perhaps less confusingly, "High Theory" -- is superior to any
particular religious traditions, including Kabbalah or Gnosticism.
Language
and concepts are inherently metaphorical, but in this modern and postmodern
age, it doesn't make sense to form a new particular, narrow system of metaphor
- a new mythic storyline or a new indirect symbolic system. As Plotinus maintained, Philosophy's
strength is that it enables one to stop depending on indirect symbolism and
much more *directly* explain transcendent knowledge and insights. This correlates with level 3 of 3-level Gnosticism
according to Freke & Gandy. The
beginner is told a simple storyline, understanding it literally. The intermediate person understands the
story as allegory.
The
advanced person no longer needs the story, but understands transcendent
knowledge directly. Given the intensity
and danger of mystic experiencing, the mythic approach may provide more
safety. Philosophical abstract
principles of transcendent knowledge combined with the intense use of the
mystic state may be too overwhelming, in several ways, for beginners.
Integrate
multiple approaches: one the one hand, provide a pure, abstract theory of
transcendent knowledge combined with understanding the loose-cognition state;
and on the other hand, fully connect that core theory over to the familiar
world religions and mystic traditions -- but be firmly *based* within the pure
abstract theory and the understanding of loose cognition.
I am
totally distanced from *practicing* any indirect symbolic system such as
Christianity, even esoteric Christianity or Kabbalah. However, the study of mystery-myth or mystic-state myth is
useful, enlightening, and edifying. The
stories of Gnosticism are just silly, and Kabbalah seems just silly and
ineffective to me. However, it is
enlightening to study and comprehend the esoteric meaning of these traditions
-- I just can never take them seriously; it's all so much inferior New Age
hokum.
The only
time I accept such stuff, religious metaphorical symbolism, is at the peak of a
mountain when there is no way out.
Then, it is handy to be able to postulate God or savior or a passing of
death over my house by virtue of the blood of my sacrificed lamb-self. Metaphor is important but one must
*transcend* it and this means comprehending and browsing among multiple traditions.
I'm
seeking here the attitude toward brands of religion that the high Philosopher
of late antiquity would have held. I
respect religions, I comprehend them, I even rely on them at moments, yet I am
loathe to fall into them. Perhaps in
the end the mature Theorist or Philosopher who has attained transcendent
knowledge has no objection to engaging with a religious tradition such as
Kabbalah or some Gnostic brand, or mystic Catholic religion, or Buddhist
cultural practices.
Engaging
with religious symbolism is not my style except when I'm dying and being reborn
and am in the throes of a spiritual emergency -- even then, it's a theoretical
call for transcendent rescuing. I only
care about the abstract pure principles of which religious symbolism serves to
make more readily graspable to the unenlightened mind. In the end, the principle, not the symbol
representing the principle, is what is important.
This means
the Theorist in the end has no problem embracing such metaphorical symbols as
mystery-myth traffics in, but such an embrace can only be a loose embrace that
can let go at any moment and instead embrace the pure principle which the
metphorical symbol points to. Rather
than bothering with Kabbalah or Gnostic activities, I'd much rather study the
abstract pure meaning of several such systems in conjunction with studying
loose cognition.
The only
respectable Kabbalah (or Gnosticism, or Christianity, or Buddhism, or Islam) is
one that integrates the mystic state of cognition, and abstract as well as
metaphorical understanding of its system.
The only acceptable religious metaphoricalism is that which is not
needed or relied upon; disposable metaphoricalism. It's clearer to discuss this in terms of ergonomics; High
Philosophers likely assert that a pure direct Philosophical religion is more
ergonomic than metaphorical symbolism-based forms of religion.
The most
ergonomic approach to transcendent knowledge is an integral combination of the
mystic altered state *and* a pure system of Theory *and* multiple systems of
metaphorical symbolism. What the
Theorist is wary of is the attempt to achieve transcendent knowledge via only
one or two of these. These limited,
lopside approaches can't get very far:
o The mystic state without abstract theory
o Theory without the mystic state
o Metaphorical symbolism without Theory or the
mystic state
o Metaphorical symbolism without Theory
The most
ergonomic approach is an integral combination of:
o Pure, abstract, direct, essentially
non-metaphorical Theory of transcendent knowledge (Hindu metaphysics, Integral
Theory, cybernetic theory of ego transcendence)
o The loose-cognition mystic state
(entheogens, meditation, sensory deprivation)
o Metaphorical symbolism from multiple
myth-religion systems (Kabbalah, Christianity, folk/mythic Buddhism,
Gnosticism, Hellenistic mystery-myth)
Jesus
Christ, Sun of God: Ancient Cosmology and Early Christian Symbolism
David
Fideler
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0835606961
editor of
Phanes Press - http://www.phanes.com
Fideler's
Alexandria journal:
http://www.phanes.com/alexandria.html
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?isbn=093399916X
This book
looks like it would be a perfect example of piling up profundity to the ceiling
and beyond and yet still utterly missing the heart of the matter. It appears to be an incredibly excellent
study of Greco-Roman esoterism, but utterly uninformed by the all-important and
absolutely central use of psychoactive 'wine' in the Greco-Roman
initiations.
This is
like reproducing a late-60s acid-rock dance, but without the acid, or like a
Museum of Rock without any coverage of psychedelics. It's like standing in awe of fireworks -- without realizing that
they are supposed to be lit.
The result
is the most perfect kind of literalism, when you study symbolism to infinite
depth without knowing that the ultimate referent or reference point of esoteric
symbolism is the actual experience of the altered state -- and not just verbiage
about "profound experience", but the actual experience of the altered
experiential state. I expect this book
talks up "experience", without talking about visionary plants and the
cognitive phenomena that result from them.
We end up
with purely "mental" results -- and a theory that assumes that all
this esoteric lofty theorizing occurs in the ordinary state of
consciousness. This book might be a
perfect example of the ordinary-state-of-consciousness fallacy, which assumes
that esotericism is based in the ordinary state of consciousness.
The rare
negative reviewer wrote, in an unpopular review:
>>A
detailed book having nearly nothing to do with Jesus. A very detailed analysis of western/Greek mathematical, mythical,
and geometric systems. This book has nearly nothing to do with spirituality or
Jesus. A very mental book.
This book
has nothing to do with Dionysus or spirituality; it is a detailed shadow
reflection uninformed by the altered-state component or dimension. That is my guess. I assume the author is aware of entheogens, but I doubt that the
book explicitly or implicitly makes the deserved strong connection between
Greco-Roman esoterism and entheogens.
It's not
that Greco-Roman esoterism is all about entheogens, but rather that entheogens
were the factor that *activated* the profundity of esoterism. Without the entheogen fire, the result is
inactive, limpid esoterism, just like an overblown grandiose Catholic Eucharist
ritual that uses merely a placebo sacrament, though thick tomes explain that
this sacrament deeply regenerates the psyche through the remarkable action of
the Holy Spirit.
The
greatest threat to actual esoterism is that which strenuously dances and paints
itself as "experiential esoterism" without actually delivering
that. The result is inactivated or
inert esotericism mistaken for activated esoterism. Fully detailed low esoterism, even with breathless talk of
profound experiencing, is still merely low esoterism.
For
mystics, official Christianity or Buddhism is bad not so much because of its
mundane harm, but because it is almost wholly inert. It is uninspired and inactive, posing as being inspired and
inactive. There's no flame or spark
igniting it, but it claims that there is.
It's a paper labelled "this is on fire" but which isn't on
fire.
I'm not
criticizing such books because they are books, but rather, because they are
books that ought to cover ancient 'wine' initiation and present esoterism as
grounded in the intense altered state.
A truly good book about esoterism would describe the initiations as
sacred science that is ignited by visionary plants. A discussion of sacred science without a discussion of visionary
plants can hardly be called coverage of "sacred" science.
It's like
the difference between mystic theology and plain uninspired theology, or
between the "binity" and "trinity": official Western
theology is binity, full of theory about Father and Son, but not the Holy
Spirit.
Description
of esoteric symbolism without description of the esoteric state of consciousness
misses the essence of the subject. The
result is a description of insider knowledge written by one who lacks insider
knowledge. Consider degrees of
inspiration of an esoteric book:
Mediocre
no matter how detailed:
Description
of esoteric symbolism without description of the esoteric state of
consciousness, and without the presence of the esoteric state.
Maybe the
author knows secretly that it's all sparked by entheogens:
In-between
is a book written with knowledge of the esoteric state, but that doesn't
explicitly cover it, instead covertly reflecting it.
Good and
ideal, as a book:
Description
of esoteric symbolism with description of the esoteric state of consciousness,
and without the presence of the esoteric state.
Ideal, as
a programme of study and training:
Description
of esoteric symbolism with description of the esoteric state of consciousness,
with the presence of the esoteric state.
I'm taking
such an extreme stance, even recreational drug users may be shocked when I so
equate the esoteric state with visionary plants, that I equate the lack of
visionary plants with the lack of the esoteric state of consciousness. I hold that visionary plants are a hundred
times as effective and relevant than alternate techniques, for accessing the
mystic altered state.
This is
the simplest explanation and solution to the puzzle of Greco-Roman experiential
initiation and religion, which evidently had primary, intense mystic
experiencing available on-tap for everyone, through drinking psychoactive 'wine'
at "sacred banquets". Per
McKenna: some people can with great effort trigger the visionary state without
using visionary plants, but why bother?
That ability is merely a curiosity.
The plants are available on tap, as a lightning-vehicle.
For those
who really cared about esoterism, and are deeply interested in effective
techniques, plants were helpful and therefore were used -- there was no reason
not to take advantage of them as ideal triggers of the esoteric state of
cognition. The people who are not so
driven to success in esoterism have less reason to embrace such effective tools
as visionary plants.
Found a
couple hits in Fideler's Alexandria journal:
http://www.phanes.com/alexan2.html
Psychedelic
Effects and the Eleusinian Mysteries by Shawn Eyer
http://www.phanes.com/alexan4.html
Drinking
with the Muses by Thomas Willard
How to
Host a Philosophical Banquet by Plutarch
Esoterism
was heavily informed by visionary plants, but today's scholars have limited
familiarity with visionary plants and don't recognize how strong and primary
the connection is. To those who know,
half-informed studies of esoterism scream out "activated with visionary
plants", even though the authors of the studies don't consciously make the
connection, just as to those who know, the heart of Christianity is first of
all, entheogen-shaped.
Per
official theology, the center of Christian practice is the Eucharist, and the
Eucharist is manifestly entheogen-shaped.
Esoterism is entheogen-shaped, but is officially (per today's mainstream
scholars) not entheogenic.
Except for
the retarded Christian scholars of shamanism, all scholars have come to accept
the predominance of entheogens in shamanism: how long until the same conclusion
is reached for Greco-Roman myth-religion-philosophy, where entheogens evidently
were a universal open secret? Our view
of the ancient world is so out of touch with the reality, few people realize
that cannabis and opium were sold all over Rome, at every corner drugstore and
7-11.
How much
scholarship is intent on obscuring this understanding? Like the official prohibitionist story, the
official news reports are intended to hide rather than reveal; disinformation
and substitute coverage, with fully vested interests. Today's scholars are intent on discovering the reality of
Greco-Roman culture, but with the strict requirement that they must not
conclude that the basis of the culture was visionary plants.
Same with
popular Buddhism and Western esoterism scholarship: dig up the ancient facts
with all your might -- but halt the moment the facts turn out to be that the
entire subject was based on and came from visionary plants. It's like the museum exhibits about paper
and rope materials which say "flax", "cotton", or
"wood pulp" when they really mean "hemp".
It's easy
to predict the stance of the Alexandria journal on entheogens -- admit just
enough entheogen usage to let off the pressure; treat it as something that only
happened once a lifetime, and only in the abnormal, singular case of Eleusis. Don't admit that the entire realm of
myth-religion-mysticism-philosophy was all directly based on visionary
plants. Keep assuming that 'wine' means
modern "wine". Perhaps privately
admit the ubiquity of entheogens, but don't explicitly let on.
This
cover-up backpedalling approach is one possible path, and there's much pressure
to cop-out and cave into that tactic.
Intellectual honesty ought to be immune to such considerations -- but
the bottom line is, what worldview about the ancient esoterism do people want to
see? That's what they'll get. If they want only a bit of visionary plants,
playing just a minor, condoned-off role, they'll find that and publish that.
>Jesus
Christ, Sun of God: Ancient Cosmology and Early Christian Symbolism
>David
Fideler
>http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0835606961
>It
appears to be an incredibly excellent study of Greco-Roman esoterism, but
>utterly
uninformed by the all-important and absolutely central use of
>psychoactive
'wine' in the Greco-Roman initiations.
Index has
no entries for:
wine
drugs
necessity
freewill
determinism
heimarmene
fate
Has:
Mithraic eucharist/sacraments
So the
index and book are weak, right where they ought to be strong. This shows the utility of my identifying the
four key points on which I differ from "dead" and inert 20th Century
thinking about esotericism and Greco-Roman culture:
o Mythic-only Jesus, same with other figures
(anti-euhemerism)
o Experiencing and transcending
fate/determinism is key
o Entheogens are key, foundation, centrally
important
o Mystic insight is fully rationally
explanable, despite blackbox transcendent element (graciousness of transcendent
controller)
http://www.egodeath.com/images/secretmessage.gif
In Western
esotericism, the occult hermetic sciences are led by the standard trilogy of
magic, astrology, and alchemy, apparently intermixed as
magic/astrology/alchemy, and these allegorized mystic-state development of the
psyche. Astrology is clear; it is easy
to identify the part of astrology that is allegory for mystic-state
experiencing and enlightenment.
Alchemy is
also fairly clear, to identify the aspects of alchemy that form an allegory or
metaphorical description of mystic-state experiencing and enlightenment. Magic also has a discernible and well-known
mystic upper layer, but I have yet to form a specific model of this. The way is clear for an equivalence table
listing allegorical equivalence among myth-religion systems such as Christianity,
Greek myth, magic, alchemy, astrology, and Jewish mysticism.
Why is
this a worthwhile endeavor? It's
immediately proving to be a tractable and straightforward problem of
identifying equivalent themes. The key
to solving this puzzle is the right set of assumptions and attitudes:
Axiomatic
assumption: These systems are grounded in the intense mystic altered state,
most classically induced by visionary plants.
They are not grounded in the ordinary state of consciousness.
Axiomatic
assumption: These systems generally include the same equivalent set of
concepts, such as fear, protection, determinism, seeking lasting change,
transformation, and so on. There are
various yet equivalent systems of description.
Axiomatic
assumption: The problem is not difficult; it is straightforward with the right
mindset. These religions were *popular*
religions and therefore no special genius can be needed to figure them out or
understand them; they are just like brain-teasers: they seem utterly baffling
to those who lack the solution or the key to the solution, yet essentially
simple and straightforward to those who are properly equipped with the key to
understanding.
Axiomatic
assumption: Humor, irony, cleverness, and wit are essential components that are
required for balancing out the seriousness and heaviness of authentic, actual
mystic-state venturing.
Axiomatic
assumption: These systems are concerned with 2-state meaning; they are aware
that the phenomena and mode of reception characterizing the mystic altered
state contrasts with the ordinary state.
At the extreme, this means deliberately misleading ordinary-state
thinking, while blossoming into higher coherence when the mystic-state
descriptive allegory is revealed.
Axiomatic
assumption: The best of the thinkers view these systems as this type of
transcendent experiential allegory, even if such thinkers are a numeric
minority. They are the authentic
representatives -- or, the degree to which these thinkers hold the views expressed
here is the degree to which these thinkers are authentic or legitimate
representatives of the impersonal, archetypal tradition in itself. Any one person has a more or less distorted
conception of the pure tradition in itself.
The best of the thinking of the best of the thinkers generally points
to, embodies, and represents the best of the tradition.
Endymion
wrote (paraphrased):
>>I
need to write a paper about ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, focusing on the
influence of Plotinus and Neoplatonism on Hermeticism, the Renaissance, the
beginnings of modern science and thought, modern art, and literature. What are the best resources to start
with? There's a chapter in a study book
on history of philosophy about Pico della Mirandola, Ficino, Agrippa and
Paracelzus about the influence they have had on the development of modern
science. What on-line resources do you
recommend?
I need to
gather my postings into a resource Web page on this subject. The magic ticket is "western
esotericism".
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22western+esotericism%22
Book list:
Western Esotericism
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/listmania/list-browse/-/30HYPPVWEBD87
Book list:
Hermeticism and ancient mystic astrology
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/listmania/list-browse/-/1MCK4VKPPQ6N3
The search
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/egodeath/messagesearch?query=western%20esotericism
returns
valuable entry-points for research; for example:
Thread:
Western Esotericism general info
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/egodeath/message/2134
Plato's
cave, true Virtue, the Good, making the enlightened philosophy the king, divine
rescue, looking into the heavens and falling into a well, secret kingship revealed
Plato's
allegory of the cave is about entheogenic discovery of no-free-will (losing
false kingship), utter dependence, arbitrary rescue by the One (by the grace of
true divine Virtue), granting legitimate no-free-will kingship, and ability now
to rule over people as one who has been informed/shaped by true Virtue. True Virtue is debated against sheer
crushing force (God's potentially controllership-destroying will to power) in
these mystical-political writings.
Sacred
kingship has always been informed by these mystical experiences including the
experience of the arbitrariness of the uncontrollable transcendent
controller. As the mystic is brought to
beseech the Divine to sustain and not destroy the mystic's control-viability,
so too do people approach the fearsome political king to beseech him; the
relation of the political king to his subjects is deliberately modeled on the
relationship between the helpless ego-dead mystic and the hidden uncontrollable
transcendent controller.
Why does
God or Isis sustain rather than destroy the viable controllership of those who
are brought to truth? To balance the
equation, we must have both sustaining and destroying, in one mythic-mystic
form or another. God strikes down the
lower self, and crowns the higher self.
Or, God strikes down himself in the form of his mythic son, and also
raises up this son and his adopted sons.
Rene
Girard writes of sacrificial violence and doubles - I do see some
connection. Doubles appear in the two
rebels next to the central cross, the two crossed-leg figures around Mithras,
the two goats with one banished with the curses and bad fortune.
The
android computes truth and splits into two -- one android-self is cursed and
ruined as a viable self-controller agent, ending up shut down as with HAL9000
(equally incapable of making a mistake), and the other is given sustained
controllership. Both outcomes must be
acknowledged as fully legitimate -- sacrifices safely and vicariously
acknowledge the legitimacy of the negative outcome -- "Lord strike me down
righteously, you sustain me at your inscrutable whim and arbitrarily preserve
me as you wish though you could instantly destroy me if you wish that."
There are
two kinds of doubles: the lower and higher mental worldmodels (the passing age
and the age to come, the lower and higher self), and the two outcomes of seeing
divine truth -- the outcomes of destroying or preserving viable
self-control. To look up and turn
around and see truth is to fall down in a well, which does not mean random
amusing comical folly, but rather, being brought to a state of utter
dependence, needing rescue.
*Rescue*
is a key spiritual concept; Grof talks about "spiritual emergency" --
does he talk about its correlate, "rescue"? When the mystic control agent is brought into the presence of
truth about its controllership, personal controllership breaks down and
completely crashes, goes dead, shuts off.
The divine
transcendent controller made this happen and is in full control of the
situation -- a secret controller originally (Jesus' secret messianic kingship
prior to his disciples learning the truth), and then, ones eyes are opened to
see that now and in the past, this whole time, one was actually controlled by
God or Isis or Mithras all along, secretly.
When the
sun behind the sun, the controller behind the controller chooses to reveal
itself to the lower controller, this is inherently a kind of threat to the
mind's control system, just as the babe knows its utter helplessness with
respect to the parent.
The hidden
transcendent controller logically could just as well flip a coin and destroy or
preserve his creation, his subject, the mystic (now a crashed controller)
brought to him. Why does he preserve
the control-viability of the mystic? No
reason whatsoever, which is the same as saying "the miracle of
transcendent compassion and love".
Will you
be made to assume that God is miraculously good, compassionate, and loving --
sustaining your viable control? Or will
you be made to assume that God will use you to demonstrate his ability to wreck
stable self-control? There is no
logical basis for deciding, and neither you can flip a coin to tell.
This
reasoning collapses like a Zen koan; God is divine and hidden -- is he loving,
or is he just; in the case of a particular visit to him by a particular mystic,
does he sustain or does he destroy the mystic's controllership viability? Picture approaching a political king to whom
you are subject: he has divine right to help you or to destroy you. On what basis does he choose? His inscrutable and in-principle arbitrary
whim; only the Zen master can explain the king's reasoning.
In any
particular case, will God (the One, the transcendent controller) sustain or
destroy the mystic's control viability?
Sustain, because why would God bother to create the mystic, then bring
the mystic to God, only to then immediately destroy the mystic's viability of
practical life? Thus ordinary life --
"this passing age" prior to being brought to truth, is a logical
basis for assuming that God wants to preserve and not crush the mystic's
controllership.
This God
of Virtue and Good Compassion, Order and Life may vie with the God of Wrath and
Harsh Powerful Judgment, Chaos and Emnity -- which one wins, in the
conflagration when time ends? The good
outcome of the story is that the God of Wrath pours his wrath into himself,
taking the blow himself, striking down a sheep or a substitute in your stead --
this is the principle of feeding and honoring the god of wrath, the destroying
goddess.
When I
approach the divine king, I take two of me: the king strikes one down sending
him to the ward of those who know truth and can't viably self-control, and the
king preserves the other, even crowning him.
I went
through life all on my own, knowing no parent, then suddenly during
enlightenment I discovered that the whole time, I had been fully under the
control of a hidden parent (Isis), who created and sustained me and then one
day during initiation, killed my self-concept and brought me to knowledge of
Her, and said to me:
I am your
parent and you are a helpless babe with respect to me -- I am your creator and
sustainer, hidden until now, and I could destroy you and have destroyed your
lower self-conception, and as I preserved your controllership before, during
your sleeping delusion, I shall at my whim as a loving parent who sustained and
brought you all this way, continue to permit you to live as a viable control
agent.
Another
kind of spiritual parent is the mature enlightened entheogen-initiated
teacher. The true authentic teacher, a
genuine initiator into adulthood, is a person who has been control-crashed and
reset by the Divine Good Parent, or by the Divine Shepherd over the flock of
no-free-will sheep who start life thinking they are freewill goats.
Most
likely, in the Greek man-boy homosexual relationship, the bearded man who had
been initiated would initiate and teach and protect the beardless boy. The boy would be led through ego death to
become mature, adult, perfected/completed.
As with the classic guru-disciple relationship, the adult initiator
would teach the youth the "loving, sustaining parent" relationship,
as training for how to relate to the Good, the Source of True Virtue, the
essentially hidden but now known uncontrollable transcendent controller.
Phillip
Cary's lecture on Plato's allegory of the cave perfectly connects with the
deepest issues of the mystic altered state peak. Some of the elements that stood out that hadn't come across in
other people's description of the cave were: being shown true Virtue, kingship
of the one who returns to the cave, and turning/conversion.
I highly
recommend this lecture course:
Philosophy
and Religion in the West
Phillip
Cary
http://www.teach12.com/ttc/assets/coursedescriptions/625.asp
"This
course offers an eye-opening perspective on the spiritual adventure of Western
thought. It is a vivid introduction to the rich and complex history that is
shared by our central traditions of religious faith and philosophic reason.
Whether you’re a believer, a seeker, or a combination of the two, it will
enrich your thinking to an unexpected degree."
However,
it is actually Cary's "Plato -- Metaphysics" lecture in the Big
Bertha of lecture series that enlightened me:
Great
Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition
http://www.teach12.com/ttc/assets/coursedescriptions/470.asp
Cary
always likes saying "A-hah, now I see it!" That is how I felt when he mentioned three items he just happened
to choose for casting shadows: triangle, tree, and virtue -- and he went out of
his way to say that the whole context and motivation for the entire allegory
was to see and discover what "true virtue" really is.
Most
expositors wrongly think of the cave as being focused on epistemology, but
Cary's presentation put the rightful emphasis on epistemology *about true
virtue*, about finding the purest example of virtue, which apparently is the
virtue of the One, considered as the Good, which initiates you and re-informs
your being and teaches you what it means to be purely good, and fits you for
proper kingship.
One major
symposium story is about Socrates, in a discussion all about politics and
virtue, refuting the position that good and bad are just nonexistent chimeras,
with power as the only reality and the only real and actual basis for
sociopolitical order.
Per Philip
Cary, the sequence in the allegory of the cave is the following, with my
comments added.
1. Head
chained forward watching shadows in cave.
2. Be
released (I read this as "be given visionary plants, mixed wine, have
loose cognition")
3. Turn
(Cary wisely points out this is "conversio" in Latin and thus a
religious conversion). Jesus said
"Let those on the outside not understand my meaning, lest they turn and
their sins [confused assumption of freewill moral agency] be
forgiven." In the cave allegory,
this turn particularly means the reversal of the vector of awareness (this is
one spatial way of describing mental subsystems) from pointing outward, to
pointing inward to the self system and to ultimate innermost consciousness.
4. Ascend
out of the underground cave to the light.
Note that Mithraums were underground.
This is the light of truth, which mechanically in terms of cognitive
science is really probably merely white-light feedback of pure consciousness. This is enlightenment. According to Platonism, "the
Light" is "the Good" is "the One" (Ground of Being).
5. Be
re-formed by the Good. When the mind
brings its flawed egoic thinking structures up against the truth, and examines
the true actual dynamics of mental structures including self-controllership,
the mind's mental worldmodel is forced to change to accomodate the radical new
data, that one is only a secondary controller.
6. You
return to the cave. Cary specifically
says "you can't stay up there -- until you die, that is; you have to come
back down to the cave." Again
Cary's description points out several key points no one ever pointed out to me
before about the allegory of the cave.
After the visionary plant wears off, tight cognitive binding returns,
retaining the new worldmodel as an additional, purer perspective on time,
space, world, will, and control.
7. You are
made into a philosopher-king, because you know the Good, you have been informed
or shaped by the Good, so you are fit to rule as a good philosopher-king.
What's so
good about the Good? Why did
Hellenistic mystic standard thinking equated the Good, the One, the Light, and
Truth? When the mind discovers that its
controllership is metaphysically merely secondary control, its previous
thinking fails, one feels helpless and powerless at controlling oneself, but
for no reason, by a miracle, the Good sets personal virtual practical
self-control back on its feet again, restabilizing control.
You as
control agent are rescued from the cybernetic well you were utterly helplessly
trapped in; you are freed from the prison by someone who has nothing at all to
gain from you and who has every right to abandon you to your fate -- apparently
another key metaphor scenario is the abandoned child, which smells like the
Good Samaritan theme to me.
Likely the
idea was that in that day, people exposed unwanted babies to their fate. If you happened to come along and *rescue*
that baby and sustain and raise it as your own beloved child, you did it under
zero obligation. I heard of a
particularly dull Attic tragedy play about a baby and ownership -- I would
check to see if it was all an isomorphic double-entendre discussing the
dynamics of the entheogenic mystic altered state.
I am
posting this notification as requested.
___________________
Shalom
Aleichem,
Please
visit our Donmeh West Yahoo! Groups website at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DONMEH_WEST
. Donmeh West is the largest and oldest Kabbalah community on Yahoo! Groups. We
do not compete with this fine list, to which you already belong, but simply
complement it with a multi-media, virtual academy dedicated specifically to the
"Yalhakian" Neo-Sabbatian Kabbalah of Reb Yakov Leib HaKohain, which
you can learn more about at his website, http://www.donmeh-west.com.
Raising up
the Holy Sparks together,
Yehoshua
ben Yakov Leib, Administrative Assistant
DONMEH
WEST
__________
I consider
the subject of Jewish mysticism essential for completely reconsidering
Christianity as something that gradually formed out of mystery religions and
Jewish esotericism, combined with various political grapplings.
Ultimately
I'm most interested in grasping world myth/mysticism fully rationally -- my
current focus; I'm definitely beginning to move away from a 90% focus on
Christianity to more like 30%, with world myth/mysticism receiving 70% focus --
all interpreted through the lens of entheogenic loose cognition, block-universe
determinism, and self-control cybernetics.
Book list:
Magic as
Metaphor for Mystic Altered-State Experiencing (Western History of Magic)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/listmania/list-browse/-/1UJL0IYF5P24S
History
of Magic 2
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/listmania/list-browse/-/YV6AB3F2XXTE
___________________________
Esotericism
books -- tables of contents and overviews
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/cm/member-reviews/-/A16N0JOG60DRM3
Javafusion
has bulk-entered tables of contents and dust-jacket overviews for expensive,
scholarly, interesting books. Most of
them are shown below. Most of these
books cost $100-$200; university libraries might carry them. Such a set of overviews and outlines for
these types of books is unusual and valuable.
These overviews and outlines reveal many esoteric mystic-metaphor
themes.
Envisioning
Magic: A Princeton Seminar and Symposium
(Studies
in the History of Religions, No 75) by Peter Schafer (Editor), Hans G.
Kippenberg (Editor)
Magic and
Theology in Ancient Egypt 1
Magic
and Religion in Ancient Judaism 19
Jewish
Magic in the Greek Magical Papyri (PGM VII.260-71) 45
Reporting
the Marvellous: Private Divination in the Greek Magical Papyri 65
How to
Cope with a Difficult Life. A View of Ancient Magic 93
Ritual
Expertise in Roman Egypt and the Problem of the Category 'Magician' 115
Magic in
Roman Civil Discourse: Why Rituals could be Illegal 137
Rising
to the Occasion: Theurgic Ascent in its Cultural Milieu 165
On
Judaism, Jewis Mysticism and Magic 195
Miracle,
Magic, and Disenchantment in Early Modern Germany 215
Between
Religion and Magic: An Analysis of Witchcraft Trials in the Spanish
Netherlands, Seventeenth Century 235
Language,
Signs and Magic 255
Index of
Sources 273
Index of
Names and Subjects 275
Secrets of
Nature: Astrology and Alchemy in Early Modern Europe
(Transformations:
Studies in the History of Science and Technology) by William R. Newman
(Editor), Anthony Grafton (Editor)
1
Introduction: The Problematic Status of Astrology and Alchemy in Premodern
Europe 1
2
"Veritatis amor dulcissimus": Aspects of Cardano's Astrology 39
3
Between the Election and My Hopes: Girolamo Cardano and Medical Astrology 69
4
Celestial Offerings: Astrological Motifs in the Dedicatory Letters of Kepler's
Astronomia Nova and Galileo's Sidereus Nuncius 133
5
Astronomia inferior: Legacies of Johannes Trithemius and John Dee 173
6 The
Rosicrucian Hoax in France (1623-24) 235
7
"The Food of Angels": Simon Forman's Alchemical Medicine 345
8 Some
Problems with the Historiography of Alchemy 385
Contributors
433
Index
435
Paracelsian
Moments: Science, Medicine, and Astrology in Early Modern Europe
(Sixteenth
Century Essays & Studies, 64) by Gerhild Scholz Williams (Editor), et al
Acknowledgments
ix
Introduction
xi
Paracelsiana
Paracelsus's
Biography among His Detractors 3
Paracelsus
and the Boundaries of Medicine in Early Modern Augsburg 19
To Be or
Not to Be a Paracelsian: Something Spagyric in the State of Denmark 35
"A
Spedie Reformation": Barber-Surgeons, Anatomization, and the Reformation
of Medicine in Tudor London 71
Seeing
"Microcosma": Paracelsus's Gendered Epistemology 93
Paracelsus
on Baptism and the Acquiring of the Eternal Body 117
Paracelsus
and van Helmont on Imagination: Magnetism and Medicine before Mesmer 135
Natural
Magic and Natural Wonders
Unholy
Astrology: Did Pico Always View It That Way? 151
Wine and
Obscenities: Astrology's Degradation in the Five Books of Rabelais 163
Robert
Boyle, "The Sceptical Chymist," and Hebrew 187
Johannes
Praetorius: Early Modern Topography and the Giant Rubezahl 207
Demons,
Natural Magic, and the Virtually Real: Visual Paradox in Early Modern Europe
223
Selected
Bibliography of Paracelsiana and Early Modern Science 247
Index
257
Descenders
to the Chariot: The People Behind the Hekhalot Literature
(Supplements
to the Journal for the Study of Judaism, V. 70) by James R. Davila
The
Hekhalot literature is a bizarre conglomeration of Jewish esoteric and revelatory
texts in Hebrew and Aramaic, produced sometime between late antiquity and the
early Middle Ages and surviving in medieval manuscripts. These texts claim to describe the
self-induced spiritual experiences of the 'descenders to the chariot' and to
reveal the techniques that permitted these magico-religious practitioners to
view for themselves Ezekiel's Merkavah as well as to gain control of angels and
a supernatural mastery of Torah." Drawing on epigraphic and archaeological
evidence from the Middle East, anthropological models, and a wide range of
cross-cultural evidence, this book aims to show that the Hekhalot literature
preserves the teachings and rituals of real religious functionaries who
flourished in late antiquity and who were quite like the functionaries
anthropologists call shamans.
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
and Sigla
1 The
Hekhalot Literature 1
2
Mysticism, Magic, and Shamanism 25
3
Becoming a Shaman 55
4
Shamanic Ascetic Techniques 75
5
Initiatory Disintegration and Reintegration 126
6 The
Otherworldly Journey 156
7
Control of the Spirits 196
8 The
Hekhalot Literature and Other Jewish Texts of Ritual Power 214
9
Locating the Descenders to the Chariot 257
10
Conclusions 306
Bibliography
313
Indices
325
Hidden
Wisdom: Esoteric Traditions and the Roots of Christian Mysticism
(Studies
in the History of Religions, No 70) by Guy G. Stroumsa, Gedaliahu A. G.
Stroumsa
Preface
Abbreviations
Introduction
1
I Myth
as Enigma: Cultural Hermeneutics in Late Antiquity 11
II
Paradosis: Esoteric Traditions in Early Christianity 27
III
Gnostic Secret Myths 46
IV
Esotericism in Mani's Thought and Background 63
V The
Body of Truth and its Measures: New Testament Canonization in Context 79
VI
Moses' Riddles: Esoteric Trends in Patristic Hermeneutics 92
VII Clement,
Origen and Jewish Esoteric Traditions 109
VIII
Milk and Meat: Augustine and the End of Ancient Esotericism 132
IX From
Esotericism to Mysticism in Early Christianity 147
X
Mystical Descents 169
Sources
185
Indices
187
General
Index 187
Names
188
Literature
189
An
Examination and Critique of the Understanding of the Relationship Between
Apocalypticism and Gnosticism in Johannine Studies
Robert
Allan Hill
Forward
Preface
Acknowledgement
Ch. 1 An
Opening Illustration of One Specific Use of the Assumption in Johannine Studies
1
Ch. 2 An
Overview of the Thesis 9
Ch. 3
Introduction to Part Two 15
Ch. 4
Apocalyptic Eschatology in John 19
Ch. 5
Sacramental Theology in the Gospel of John 29
Ch. 6
The Assumption Strengthens Arguments Concerning the Presence of the
"Ecclesiastical Redactor" in John 35
Ch. 7
The Assumption Helps to Prove the Gospel of John Is Not Gnostic 39
Ch. 8
The Assumption Supports a Theoretical Separation of Gnosticism from an Interest
in World History 53
Ch. 9
Summary and Conclusion to Part Two 61
Ch. 10
The Assumption in the History of Apocalyptic Studies 67
Ch. 11 A
Third Wave: The Emergence of Vertical Eschatology in Apocalyptic Studies 87
Ch. 12
Summary and Conclusion to Part Three 97
Ch. 13
Introduction to Part Four 99
Ch. 14
The Traditional View of Gnostic Eschatology 103
Ch. 15
The Assumption and Recent Scholarship in Gnosticism 107
Ch. 16
The Treatise on the Resurrection (N.H.C. I,4) 119
Ch. 17
The Paraphrase of Shem (N.H.C. VII,1) 143
Ch. 18
The Concept of Our Great Power (N.H.C. VI,4) 159
Ch. 19
The Origin of the World (N.H.C. II,5) 173
Ch. 20
The Book of Thomas the Contender (N.H.C. II,7) 185
Ch. 21
The Gospel of Philip (N.H.C. II,3) 195
Ch. 22
Toward a New View of Eschatology in Gnosticism 207
App. 1
An Eschatological Outline of the Paraphrase of Shem 227
App. 2
Apocalypticism in Gnostic Literature: A Comparative Approach to Six Nag Hammadi
Tractates 233
Bibliography
237
Authors'
Index 257
Seek to
See Him: Ascent and Vision Mysticism in the Gospel of Thomas
(Supplements
to Vigiliae Christianae, Vol 33) by April D. De Conick
Preface
I The
Problem: Is Thomas Gnostic? 3
II The
Solution: Thomas is Mystical 28
III The
Triad of Questions in Logion 50 and Mystical Ascent 43
IV The
Triad of Answers in Logion 50 and Tradition History 64
V The
Vision of God or his Kavod 99
VI
Preparations for the Visio Dei in Logia 27 and 37 126
VII
Vision of the Images in Logion 84 148
VIII The
Background and Theology of Thomas in Summary 175
Bibliography
183
Author
Index 200
Logion
Index 204
Name and
Subject Index 205
Voices of
the Mystics: Early Christian Discourse in the Gospels of John and Thomas and
Other Ancient Christian Literature
(Journal
for the Study of the New Testament. Supplement Series, 157) by April D. De
Conick, April D. Deconick
The Gospel
of John has always been perceived as a more mystical Gospel than the Synoptics.
This book explores the mysticism of John in its historical context and puts
forward evidence that the mysticism developed in this text is the result of the
textualization of a dialogue between the Johannine and Thomasine Christians on
the subject of soteriology. In contradiction to the Christians who revered the
Gospel of Thomas and taught salvation through ascent and vision mysticism, the
Johannine Gospel argues for a mysticism based on the faith experience. DeConick
examines evidence from the Preachings of John, the Gospel of the Saviour
(Papyrus Berolinensis 22220), the Apocryphon of James, the Ascension of Isaiah,
and the Dialogue of the Saviour to show that this soteriological controversy
did not end with the composition of the Gospel of John but continued well into
the second century. This book not only sheds new light on the development of
Johannine ideology, but also forges a new path in New Testament socio-rhetorical
criticism, particularly by developing the field of tradition intertexture.
Acknowledgments
9
Abbreviations
11
Ch. 1
Traditio-Rhetorical Criticism: A Methodology for Examining the Discourse of
Intertraditions 15
Ch. 2
Vision Mysticism in the Ancient World: The Religio-Historical Horizon 34
Ch. 3
Johannine Polemic against Vision Mysticism: The Traditio-Religious Horizon and
the Point of Discourse 68
Ch. 4
Thomasine Support for Vision Mysticism: The Traditio-Religious Horizon of
John's Opponents 86
Ch. 5 Faith
Mysticism in the Gospel of John: The Interpretative Trajectory and Synthetic
End Point 109
Ch. 6
Vision Mysticism in Early Syrian Christian Texts: The Discourse Continues 133
Bibliography
164
Index of
References 177
Index of
Modern Authors 188
Exorcising
Our Demons: Magic, Witchcraft, and Visual Culture in Early Modern Europe
(Studies
in Medieval and Reformation Thought, 91) by Charles Zika
List of
Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Preface
Introduction:
Demons and Histories 1
Ch. 1
Reuchlin's De Verbo Mirifico and the Magic Debate of the Late Fifteenth Century
21
Ch. 2
Reuchlin and Erasmus: Humanism and Occult Philosophy 69
Ch. 3
Agrippa of Nettesheim and his Appeal to the Cologne Council in 1533: The
Politics of Knowledge in Early Sixteenth-Century Germany 99
Ch. 4
Hosts, Processions and Pilgrimages: Controlling the Sacred in Fifteenth-Century
Germany 155
Ch. 5
The Reformation Jubilee of 1617: Appropriating the Past in European Centenary
Celebrations 197
Ch. 6
Fears of Flying: Representations of Witchcraft and Sexuality in
Sixteenth-Century Germany 237
Ch. 7
She-man: Visual Representations of Witchcraft and Sexuality 269
Ch. 8
Durer's Witch, Riding Women and Moral Order 305
Ch. 9
The Wild Cavalcade in Lucas Cranach's Melancholia Paintings: Witchcraft and Sexual
Disorder in Sixteenth-Century Germany 333
Ch. 10
Body Parts, Saturn and Cannibalism: Visual Representations of Witches'
Assemblies in the Sixteenth Century 375
Ch. 11
Fashioning New Worlds from Old Fathers: Reflections on Saturn, Amerindians and
Witches in a Sixteenth-Century Print 411
Ch. 12
Cannibalism and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe: Reading the Visual Images
445
Ch. 13
Appropriating Folklore in Sixteenth-Century Witchcraft Literature: The
Nebelkappe of Paulus Frisius 481
Ch. 14
Writing the Visual into History: Changing Cultural Perceptions of Late Medieval
and Reformation Germany 523
Ch. 15
Nuremberg: The City and its Culture in the Early Sixteenth Century 553
Index of
Names 585
Index of
Places 593
Index of
Subjects 596
The
Gnostic Imagination: Gnosticism, Mandaeism and Merkabah Mysticism
(Brill's
Series in Jewish Studies, Vol. 13) by N. Deutch, Nathaniel Deutsch
Acknowledgements
I The
Problem 1
II
Defining Gnosticism and Merkabah Mysticism 18
III
Scripture and Exegesis 56
IV
Cosmology and Ascent 68
V
Theology 80
Bibliography
154
Index
159
The
Alchemy of Light: Geometry and Optics in Late Renaissance Alchemical
Illustration
(Symbola
Et Emblemata. Studies in Renaissance and Baroque Symbolism, Vol 10) by Urszula
Szulakowska (Editor)
Acknowledgments
IX
Introduction
XI
1. The
Semiotic Structures of Renaissance Alchemical Imagery 1
2.
Geometry and Astrology in Late Medieval and Early Renaissance Alchemy 12
3. The
influence of Medieval Optics on Renaissance Alchemy 29
4.
Paracelsian Alchemy: the "Astral Virtue" and the "Aerial
Saltpetre" 41
5. John
Dee's Alchemy of Light: the Monas Hieroglyphica and the Cabbalah 55
6. John
Dee's Conceptual Architecture and "Zographie" in an Alchemical
Context 71
7.
Heinrich Khunrath: Divine Light and the Fire of the Magi 79
8.
Heinrich Khunrath's Amphiteatrum Sapientiae Aeternae: the 1595 and 1602
editions 103
9.
Heinrich Khunrath's Amphiteatrum Sapientiae Aeternae: the edition of 1604
(published Hanover, 1609) 113
10.
Epicureans, Blasphemers, Sophists and Black-Magicians: the Persecution of
Heinrich Khunrath 139
11.
Michael Maier's Alchemical Geometry of the Sun 153
12.
Robert Fludd: The Divine Alchemy of the Eye of God 167
Conclusion
183
Bibliography
185
Illustrations
201
Index
Quest for
the Phoenix: Spiritual Alchemy and Rosicrucianism in the Work of Count Michael
Maier (1569-1622)
(Arbeiten
Zur Kirchengeschichte, Vol 88) by Hereward Tilton
Foreword
I
Introduction: Jung and Early Modern Alchemy
1 The
alchemical chimera 1
2 The
reception of Jung amongst historians of alchemy 2
3 The
arguments of Principe and Newman 9
4 The
origins of Jung's alchemy and the work of Richard Noll 18
5
'Secret threads': the seventeenth century 'Carl Jung of Mainz' and Count
Michael Maier 22
6
Spiritual alchemy, Rosicrucianism and the work of Count Michael Maier 30
II
Maier's Formative Years
1 The
context of Maier's life and thought 35
2
Auguries of fortune: Maier's childhood and parentage 38
3 The
influence of Governor Heinrich Rantzau 45
4
Galenism and Maier's studies at Frankfurt an der Oder 48
5 'First
love and grief': Maier's peregrinatio academica 54
6 The
theses on epilepsy 59
7
Contact with the arcana 61
8
Maier's first alchemical experiment 65
III
Bohemia and England
1 Maier
at the court of Emperor Rudolf II 69
2 The
Hymnosophia 71
3 The
reversal of fortune 77
4 The
most secret of secrets 80
5 A
'Rosicrucian mission' to England? 87
6 The
seventeenth rung of the alchemical ladder and the art of gold-making 91
7 A
journey to England 99
8
Francis Anthony and the 'drinkable gold' 102
9 The
Golden Tripod: "Truth is concealed under the cover of shadows" 107
IV The
Rosicrucian 'Imposture'
1
Illness and a chance encounter 113
2 The
origins of Rosicrucianism and the Leipzig Manuscript of Michael Maier 116
3 Johann
Valentin Andreae and the nature of the Order 127
4 The
serious jest 131
5 An
invitation to Rosicrucians, wherever they may lie hidden 139
6
Uncovering the true Brethren 150
7
Defining Rosicrucianism: Silentium post Clamores and the Themis Aurea 160
8 Regni
Christi frater: Maier's 'entrance into the Order' 173
V The
Completion of the Work
1 The
squaring of the natural circle 181
2 Maier
and the Calvinist court of Moritz of Hessen-Kassel 189
3
Millennialism, nationalism and the descent into war 192
4 The
Civitas Corporis Humani - procuring a medicine of piety 202
5
Ulysses and the death of Maier 208
6 The
phoenix and the return of the long-absent traveller 215
VI
Conclusion: Maier and the Historiography of Alchemy
1 Piety
and the coniunctio oppositorum 233
2 Chymia
and alchemia 235
3 The
'Tradition' and the fate of Maier's thought 237
4
Alchemy and the re-emergence of Rosicrucianism 249
5 The
historiography of alchemy 253
Bibliography
257
Index
278
Illustrations
289
Leibniz
and the Kabbalah
(International
Archives of the History of Ideas, Vol 142) by Allison P. Coudert
Acknowledgements
A
Preliminary Note on the Kabbalah
Leibniz
and van Helmont: A Chronological Table
Introduction
1
1 A
Brief Historiography of Leibniz Studies 15
2 Van
Helmont, Leibniz, and the Kabbalah 25
3
Leibniz and van Helmont: Their Friendship and Collaboration 35
4 The
Kabbalah and Monads 78
5 The
Kabbalah and Freedom and Determinism 99
6 The
Kabbalah and Leibniz's Theodicy 112
7
Causation, Language, and the Kabbalah 136
Conclusion
155
Notes
158
Bibliography
203
Index
213
Restoring
the Temple of Vision: Cabalistic Freemasonry and Stuart Culture
(Brill's
Studies in Intellectual History, 110) by Marsha Keith Schuchard
This book
uncovers the early Jewish, Scottish, and Stuart sources of "ancient"
Cabalistic Freemasonry that flourished in Écossais lodges in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries.
Drawing on
architectural, technological, political, and religious documents, it provides
real-world, historical grounding for the flights of visionary Temple building
described in the rituals and symbolism of "high-degree" Masonry. The
roots of mystical male bonding, accomplished through progressive initiation,
are found in Stuart notions of intellectual and spiritual amicitia.
Despite
the expulsion of the Stuart dynasty in 1688 and the establishment of a rival
"modern" system of Hanoverian-Whig Masonry in 1717, the influence of
"ancient" Scottish-Stuart Masonry on Solomonic architecture, Hermetic
masques, and Rosicrucian science was preserved in lodges maintained by Jacobite
partisans and exiles in Britain, Europe, and the New World.
Readership:
Academic and general readers interested in architectural, scientific,
theatrical, and esoteric history, especially those curious about Cabalism,
Freemasonry, Rosicrucianism, Hermeticism, and their influence on art,
literature, science, and politics.
Marsha
Keith Schuchard, Ph.D. (1975) in English, University of Texas at Austin, has
published extensively on eighteenth-century Cabalistic and
"illuminist" Freemasonry and its influence on Swift, Ramsay,
Swedenborg, and Blake.
The Debate
over the Origin of Genius During the Italian Renaissance: The Theories of
Supernatural Frenzy and Natural Melancholy in Accord and in Conflict on the
Treshold of the Scientific
Brill's
Studies in Intellectual History, V. 107) by Noel L. Brann
This study
explores a prominent Italian Renaissance theme, the origin of genius, revealing
how the coalescence of a Platonic theory of divine frenzy and an Aristotelian
theory of melancholy genius eventually disintegrated under the force of late
Renaissance events.
This book
is intended for a wide audience, including, beyond Renaissance specialists,
historians of religion, medicine, art, science, and philosophy.
The Soul
and Its Instrumental Body: A Reinterpretation of Aristotle's Philosophy of
Living Nature
(Brill's
Studies in Intellectual History, 112) by A. P. Bos
Introduction
1
Ch. 1
Aristotle's psychology reconsidered 6
Ch. 2
The modern debate on Aristotle's psychology 13
Ch. 3
Pneuma as the organon of the soul in De motu animalium 31
Ch. 4
What body is suitable for receiving the soul (De anima I 3, 407b13-26)? 47
Ch. 5
Aristotle's new psychology in De anima II 1-2 69
Ch. 6
The soul in its instrumental body as the sailor in his ship (De anima II 1,
413a8-9) 123
Ch. 7
Aristotle's problems with the standard psychological theories 136
Ch. 8
The role of vital heat and pneuma in De generatione animalium 146
Ch. 9
'Fire above': the relation of the soul to the body that receives soul, in
Aristotle's De longitudine et brevitate vitae 2-3 183
Ch. 10
Pneuma and the theory of soul in De mundo 210
Ch. 11
The ultimate problem: how did Aristotle relate the intellect, which is not
bound up with soma, to the soul, which is always connected with soma? 216
Ch. 12
Aristotle's lost works: the consequences of reinterpreting the psychology of De
anima 230
Ch. 13
The information on Aristotle's Eudemus 238
Ch. 14
The fifth element as the substance of the soul 258
Ch. 15
The comparison of the steersman and his ship in Aristotle's lost works and
elsewhere 304
Ch. 16
The soul's 'bondage' according to a lost work by Aristotle 315
Ch. 17
The integration of the psychology of Aristotle's Eudemus and his De anima 358
Ch. 18
Final considerations and conclusions 374
Bibliography
383
Index
nominum 405
Index
locorum 412
Marsilio
Ficino: His Theology, His Philosophy, His Legacy
(Brill's
Studies in Intellectual History, V. 108) by Michael J. B. Allen (Editor), et al
This
volume consists of 21 essays on Marsilio Ficino (1433-99), the great Florentine
scholar, philosopher and priest who was the architect of Renaissance Platonism
and whose long-lasting influence on philosophy, love and music theory, medicine
and magic extended across Europe. Grouped into three sections, they cover such
topics as priesthood, the influence of Hermetic monism, Plotinus and Augustine,
Jewish transmission of the prisca theologia, the 15th c. Plato-Aristotle
controversy, the soul and its afterlife, the primacy of the will, theriac and
musical therapy, the notions of matter, seeds, mirrors and clocks, and other
fascinating philosophical and theological issues. Also considered are Ficino's
critics, his relationship to the Camaldolese Order, his letters to princes, his
influence on art, on Copernicus, on Chapman, and the nature of the Platonic
Academy. Readership: All those
interested in intellectual history, the Renaissance, Platonism; history and
philosophy of religion (Christian and Jewish), history of art, political
theory, literature, early science, medicine and music.
Seeing the
Word: John Dee and Renaissance Occultism
Hakan
Hakansson
Prologue:
"I come as sent by God" 7
Introduction:
Understanding early modern occultism. Retrospection and reassessment 35
I
Symbolic
exegesis, language, and history 73
The Word
of God and the languages of man 84
The Word
of God and the Book of Nature 96
John
Dee: nature, language, and the Word of God 100
The
wisdom of the ancients and the unity of knowledge 109
Roger
Bacon and the universal grammar 119
The
inner word and man's quest for reformation 129
II
The
Language of Symbols 139
The
Neoplatonic tradition of hieroglyphics 139
Emblematics
and the Book of Nature 147
The
mimetic metaphor 157
Allegorical
imagery and the wisdom of the ancients 162
Dee and
the mind of the adept 166
The
kabbalistic teachings 170
Christian
kabbalah 174
Dee and
kabbalah 180
The
Pythagorean scheme of creation 184
Dee's
mathematical kabbalah 192
Scriptural
exegesis 200
The
power of mathematical symbolism 202
"Occult"
intellection and Mens adepta 209
Alchemy
and the transmutation of the human soul 223
Trithemius
and magical theology 231
III
The
Language of Magic 240
Magic
and religion 243
Dee and
medieval ritual magic 246
True
faith and orthodox faith 255
Trithemius
and ritual magic 259
Natural
and celestial magic in medieval philosophy 268
Renaissance
magic and Dee's Propaedeumata aphoristica 274
Magic in
Dee's Monas hieroglyphica 289
Neoplatonic
theurgy and Renaissance magic 301
The
magical power of language 309
Dee, the
medicina Dei, and the end of the world 318
Epilogue
332
Acknowledgements
338
References
340
Index
370
The theme
of lasting stability (as opposed to innately, inherently unstable and therefore
perishable and transient) is important for the self-control cybernetics theory
of the ego death and reset experience. -mh
The
Immovable Race: Gnostic Designation and the Theme of Stability in Late
Antiquity (Nag Hammadi Studies , No 29) by Michael A. Williams
An
important study focusing on five gnostic texts whose authors make reference to
the Immovable Race. This designation, and the theme of stability in particular,
is an important characteristic of Gnosis and its significance was emphasized
within gnostic circles. Williams compares many similar examples of the
idealization of immovability in late antiquity, giving us an impression of the
larger fabric to which the instances of the immovable race designation belong.
This quote of Philo nicely sets the stage:
Let no one
who hears that God is firmly fixed think that there is something that provides
aid to God in order that he might stand firm. Rather, let him consider that
what is meant by this statement is that the steadfast God is the stay and
support and firmness and stability of all things, stamping immovability into
whomever he wills. (Somn. 1.158)
From
Poimandres to Jacob Bohme: Hermetism, Gnosis and the Christian Tradition
Roelof Van
Den Broek (Editor), Heertum Cis Van (Editor)
The
studies collected in this volume deal with ancient, medieval and early modern
forms of Gnosis and the diverse expressions of their myths, rites, ideas and
expectations. The emphasis lays on Hermetism in Antiquity and its influence in
the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and the early modern period. The 14
contributions were written by R. van den Broek (3), C. Gilly (2), P. Kingsley
(2), J.-P. Mahé (1), and G.Quispel (6).
The book
contains discussions of several aspects of the Hermetic and Gnostic tradition,
such as hermetic religious practices, magic, alchemy, apocalyptic visions, and
the influence of Hermetic ideas on Early Christian and medieval
theologians. The volume is of interest
for students of Graeco-Roman religiosity, Early Christianity, medieval theology
and the Hermetic traditions in the Renaissance and later western culture
Roelof van
den Broek, Dr.Theol. (1972), University of Utrecht, is Emeritus Professor of
History of Christianity at the University of Utrecht. His publications include
Studies in Gnosticism and Alexandrian Christianity (Brill, 1996).
Simon
Magus: The First Gnostic
Stephen
Haar
This
latest comprehensive work on Simon Magus lends new impetus to the investigation
of Early Christianity and questions surrounding the origin and nature of
Gnosticism. Major contributions of this study include: (1), a departure from
the traditional exegesis of Acts 8, 5-24 (the first narrative source of Simon),
and the later following reports of ancient Christian writers; (2), an overview
of the literature of Graeco-Roman antiquity to determine the contribution of
"magic" and "the Magoi" in the development of perceptions
and descriptions of Simon; and (3), the inclusion of social science explanation
models and modern estimations of "identity", in a creative approach
to questions surrounding the phenomenon of Simon.
The Fate
of the Dead: Studies on Jewish and Christian Apocalypses
(Supplements
to Novum Testamentum, Vol 93) by Richard Bauckham
These
studies focus on personal eschatology in the Jewish and early Christian
apocalypses. The apocalyptic tradition from its Jewish origins until the early
middle ages is studied as a continuous literary tradition, in which both
continuity of motifs and important changes in understanding of life after death
can be charted.
As well as
better known apocalypses, major and often pioneering attention is given to
those neglected apocalypses which portray human destiny after death in detail,
such as the Apocalypse of Peter, the Apocalypse of the Seven Heavens, the later
apocalypses of Ezra, and the four apocalypses of the Virgin Mary.
Relationships
with Greco-Roman eschatology are explored.
Several
chapters show how specific New Testament texts are illuminated by close
knowledge of this tradition of ideas and images of the hereafter.
Home (theory of the ego death and rebirth experience)