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