Exploring The Hermetic Tradition

Sure, people will, but we have a little bit of trivia to go through anyway.

Is there, how many people were here yesterday?

Good heavens.

Well, it doesn't matter because we're not going to repeat ourselves.

If anybody who was here yesterday is burning to acquire the software for the time wave,

I still have three order blanks left.

So, I don't know how you can struggle over them or something.

Do you need one?

Here it is.

Anybody else?

There's one, and here's the last one.

I'm sort of short on all my propaganda here.

There are probably enough of these so that most people or most people and some couples can have them.

This is just my schedule for the rest of the year and next.

If any of you are interested in the botanical project,

there's just a few of these descriptors left of botanical dimensions.

So, we'll pass these as far as they'll go.

Why don't we start them at the back of the room so there's an element of fairness and all this.

Does somebody want to come up and start these up from the back?

And then, more appropriately to today's subject, I finally put aside my better judgment and accepted an offer to lead a tour of upper and lower Egypt next December.

So, if you're interested in ancient Egypt or hermeticism or the grotesque humor that arises from watching people from Southern California cavort in the shadow of the Great Pyramid,

then you won't want to miss this one.

No, it'll be more, if we get our friends, it'll be much more fun than if we have to, you know, listen to that lady from Glendale who channels Attila the High.

I hope she's not listening.

I've never known her to listen.

All righty, right.

I'm surprised that there's so much overlap.

How many people weren't here yesterday?

So, these are people with a specific focus of interest on hermeticism.

Is that true?

Uh-huh.

Oh, so you didn't need that again, right?

Well, um, all of these things, oh, here are my gloves.

How did they get loose?

All of these things are, uh, it all relates to each other, at least in the seamless mush that my mind has become.

Okay, is there anything left over then from yesterday that anybody over the course of 16 hours is burning to, yeah, right.

So, how did I get that end date?

Well, it was interesting.

I realized lying in bed last night going over the day that I hadn't really discussed, um, the, the correlations, the exterior support for the 2012 date.

The way I aligned the time wave was simply by having a list of what I thought were the high novelty points in the last couple of thousand years and then fitting the thing against it.

And then when I would get what looked like a good fit where all the things on my list were in high novelty positions, then I would expand the list and see if it still fit.

And what I was, and then I, in the early phases, I was interested, I had this sort of intuition or the logos told me that, um, every cycle should begin with, uh, a bang, literally.

And that this bang was, uh, the, uh, the resonant, the trickle-down resonance of the big bang.

And I gained support for this idea from, although to call this a source of support, from Finnegan's Wake.

Where, you know, there are instances of what is called Viconian thunder, these huge thunderous words that begin every new section of the wake.

So I thought that I should, uh, look at big bangs, and when I looked at the 20th century and was trying to figure out where to start the cycle of the last, uh, of the, presumably last, but in any case, 67-year, 104.25-day cycle, where to start it in the 20th century, um, the big bang that I settled on

was Hiroshima, August the 5th, 1945, and if you add 67 years, 104.25 days to that, uh, you come very, very close to this December 22nd, 2012 date, plus everything else seemed to fit.

And then what, uh, for me, made it more persuasive was that, um, after this was all completed and pretty much set in concrete in my mind, someone pointed out to me that, uh, the Mayan calendar ends on that precise date, that day.

And this is a, uh, you know, you can call it a peculiar coincidence, but this whole realm is fraught with coincidence, um, the list was simply sort of what you know if you have a good liberal education.

In other words, you know the golden age of Greece, the Italian Renaissance, the European Enlightenment, and the 20th century.

And then you begin looking at the fine detail based on that.

When I first began, I thought that, uh, that the discovery of relativity was it, but that would have made the grand finale occur in 1973.

Let me tell you a story, just so you can see how peculiar this is.

Uh, yes, uh, yes, so I fastened in on the theory of relativity, and, uh, and I calculated forward that, uh, to try and find the end date.

And it ended on the winter solstice of, uh, of, uh, of, uh, uh, 1973.

And, uh, I thought that was moderately interesting.

It was when you propagated it forward to two of these 384-day things.

So then I went to, uh, the astronomical library at Cal and looked up in the ephemeris of eclipses, and I discovered that on this, uh, uh, winter solstice of 1973, there would be a total eclipse of, uh, the sun.

Um, and I thought that that was interesting, these accumulated, that's what you look for, is accumulations of density, of coincidence, and, uh, they publish in these astronomical atlases, uh, all the eclipses, all the eclipses of the next thousand years and the past thousand years, and they publish maps of the tracks of all of these eclipses.

So I, um, I, um, I looked up the track of the eclipse of December 22nd, 1973, and it, uh, started, I think, out in the Pacific Ocean somewhere.

At totality, it swept across La Chorera, and it, it completed itself in the delta of the Amazon over the city of Berlin, which is a big river city.

In the Amazon.

Well, I thought, I looked at this, and I, as a amateur scholar of Joyce, I was aware that the delta symbol for Joyce was always the vagina.

There's that whole geometry lesson in Finnegan's Wake that has to do with the inverting of the triangles, which is actually this obscene thing that he's going through.

So I knew that the delta was the symbol of the vagina, and then I saw that this eclipse ended in the delta of the Amazon.

And then I thought, of course, the delta of the Amazon, the world mother, the Amazon is, you know, the largest female geographical feature on the planet.

And here we had a total eclipse of the sun on a winter solstice, completing itself at Berlin, and Berlin is, uh, the Portuguese word for Bethlehem.

You see, I was, uh, you see, I was seriously, it's called delusion of reference, this, this condition.

So, uh, and I thought, wow, far out.

Uh, we, uh, now we have the answer to Yates' question.

Do you know what Yates' question was?

What rough beast is it that slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?

And so I was all quite keen on all of this.

Now, as if that weren't strange enough, whatever is, whenever somebody comes up with something like that,

the desperate argument of the pseudo-rationalists, when really slammed to the wall,

is that this information was known, it was published in books, these eclipse tracks, these ephemerides, and so forth,

it was all published in books, and consequently, uh, you didn't predict the future,

you merely tapped, merely tapped into the sum total of the human database already existent,

and your unconscious has taken all these clues and all this data,

and woven it together into a delusion, which is designed to suck you in and trap you.

Well, this is a hard argument to overcome.

The only way that you could overcome that argument is that if you predicted an event that was non-repeating,

and that nobody on Earth knew it was going to happen or could possibly know that it's going to happen at the time you make the prediction.

So, I was in the early months of 73 and the late months of 72, running around telling everybody that this winter solstice with an eclipse over the delta of the Amazon

was going to be of cosmic importance, well, then, about, um, March of 1973,

I was reading my, uh, morning paper, and on page 4, there was this large headline, and it said,

like, brightest comet yet, headed toward Earth, and I was reading this thing, and it said, you know,

this object will reach perhelion, meaning closest approach to the sun, on December 22nd of this year.

This was the comet Comet Cahotec.

Well, now, the interesting thing about Cahotec was it didn't amount to much,

but I had, I had predicted its window of appearance before it was detected by human beings or instruments anywhere on the planet.

So, it was, just from the mushroom to me, like a perfect proof that it was giving information that couldn't come from the human unconscious,

couldn't come from any calculation of past events, that a unique long period comet never before seen,

and probably never to be seen again, was going to fall right smack in the center of my window of, uh, predictive intensity.

So, you know, it's just an instance of the cosmic giggle.

I mean, in terms of, of what does it mean?

It's like, you know, when that question was posed to Mr. Natural, he said,

it don't mean shit, and, but isn't it strange?

Well, that's enough of that.

That's just to, yeah.

Well, morphogenetic fields, the theory that lies behind the I Ching,

all of these things are attempts to make a statement about the frontier of understanding,

and to the degree that, in other words, it's like there's a perception which wants to be born,

but it is, since it's at the edge of cognitive revelation, it's very hard to get it right.

I mean, the I Ching, morphogenetic fields, the tarot, uh, the time wave that we looked at yesterday,

these are all, uh, attempts to encompass within a metaphor something which is, at present, almost unsayable.

It's very interesting, if you care about this kind of thing,

to go back, uh, into the history of the evolution of ideas,

and see what it is like, what the ideological climate is like,

right before an idea crystallizes, and is finally gotten straight, or pretty straight.

Uh, an area where that happened, that I spent some time poking around in,

is, um, immediate, you know, the 15 years preceding Darwin's publication of the Origin of Species,

and, uh, Alfred Russell Wallace's paper to the Royal Society in London,

all of biology, in England, and Germany, and on the continent,

all of biology was intensely involved with what the literature of the time called

the problem of the species, and, you know, they were,

all these people were exploring various parts of the world, especially the tropics.

They could see that, if you go from one Indonesian island to another,

there is shift of species, there are slightly modified forms.

In other words, they had all the ingredients in front of them on the table,

and people were trying to figure it out, but they didn't quite have it.

And then, it crystallized in the minds of certain people.

For Alfred Russell Wallace, who is the real discoverer of natural selection,

it, it, it sort of relates to our theory of creativity.

He had malaria on the island of Ternate, north of, um, the Malukas, or in the north Malukas.

And, in the fifth day of this intense malarial fever,

he saw the solution to the problem of the species.

And he, uh, he wrote it down in this fevered state,

and then he worked his way through this illness.

And when he came down and, and looked at what he'd written,

he couldn't find fault with it.

It seemed right.

It's just a page and a half.

It's preserved.

It's all there.

So, he didn't know what exactly to do.

So, he decided he would write a letter

to the greatest, uh, naturalist, natural scientist of the age,

who was, uh, the aristocratic and well-connected Charles Darwin back in England.

By this time, Wallace had been six years knocking around in the forests of Indonesia.

So, he sends this letter to Darwin.

Darwin had been working on the origin of species for nearly 18 years.

This letter arrives in the post.

He opens it up, and he just says,

Oh, shit.

You know, who is this guy?

Some surveyor from Wales has beaten me to the punch, you know?

And so, he, he, um, I don't suppose he got on the phone,

but he sent a message with a servant to, uh, Charles Lyle,

who was his great friend and the chair,

and the president of the Royal Society at that time,

and said, you know, Charlie, this is a real problem.

I'm bringing this book out.

This guy, some clown, this guy looks like he scooped me.

And Lyle said, Don't worry.

Here's what we'll do.

We'll get him to deliver a paper at the Royal Society,

and we'll have you deliver a paper the same evening.

And you know how everybody adjourns to get drunk at the intermission,

so we'll just schedule him after the intermission.

And this was done.

And this is why Charles Darwin is the discoverer of evolution.

For a few decades, it was called the Darwin-Wallace theory,

but, uh, eventually,

and it's an interesting story, although not relevant to what we're doing,

but, uh, what overturned, well, somewhat relevant,

the reason, Dar, the reason Wallace became persona non grata in English science

was because he would not genuflect before pure reductionism.

He said there is more to evolution than mutation and natural selection.

There is a spiritual element,

and that was all it took for him to get the boot

because 19th century scientific theory and biology

was absolutely, uh, phobic of deism, belief in God.

They were really far more committed atheists

than I would wager most of us are.

It was a point of pride with them

to squeeze spiritual assumptions out of all of their theories.

There is no purpose recognized in Darwinian evolutionary theory.

To speak of purpose in their minds

was to completely misunderstand what was being suggested,

and what they wanted was a theory of how life could evolve and come to be

that would be specifically without purpose,

because the only kind of purpose they could imagine was God's plan,

and they wanted to dump that whole idea.

It was a very fierce intellectual struggle.

As the inheritors of the victory,

we don't really realize what a desperate struggle that was.

I mean, as recently as 120 years ago,

you could call yourself a member of the British intelligentsia,

and you could believe that the Earth was created

at 10 a.m. on September the 6th, 2344 B.C.

That was educated Christian opinion in England

as recently as 120 years ago.

So we have made considerable intellectual progress, at least.

They calculated, they calculated, they read the Bible,

all those begats, you know,

and the ages of each person,

so-and-so lived to be 120 years,

and he begat so-and-so,

and they added it all up,

and that was the date.

Well, yeah,

they had an incredibly limited view

of the possibility of cosmic time.

This is an intellectual revolution

that has taken place

almost within our lifetimes.

People had no idea

how old the world was

and how old human beings were.

I mean, that was as far as

the imagination of Western Europe

could be stretched

to the idea that the Earth

was 4,500 years old.

You know,

at the turn of the century,

when these French peasants

were out digging truffles

or feeding their goats or something,

and they fell into the hole

that led to the Lascaux paintings,

and they saw all these,

you know,

the bison and the deer

and these amazing paintings,

said, you know,

this is really important.

Let's get,

let's tell the experts in Paris.

So these,

the great experts

on the art of Europe

came down

and lowered themselves

into this cave

and viewed all this stuff

and then announced

to the Paris newspapers

that this stuff

was not old,

that in their expert opinion,

these things

had probably been done

as a kind of amusement

by French soldiers

in the Grand Army of Napoleon

who overwintered there

in 1812, you know.

So they were saying

it's basically

less than 100 years old

from their vantage point.

These things were

20 to 25,000 years old,

and as this dawned,

this realization,

this is the discovery

of deep time,

the idea that the Earth

could be 4 billion years old,

you know.

These were astonishing

intellectual revolutions

of which we are the inheritors,

and we've sort of grown up

with these assumptions,

but they are very,

very recent leaps

in the evolution

of the European imagination.

That's right.

Oh, yeah.

We're a country

of rattlesnake-handling screwballs.

I mean,

every time I go to Europe,

it amazes me

the great difference

between Europe

and the United States

is that they,

it's a secular society

over there.

You know,

they have transcended

fundamentalism

pretty thoroughly,

and so discussions

about social mores

or drugs or stuff

like that

can go on

without invoking concepts

like God's wrath

and Jesus' plan

and stuff

where you just,

you know.

Anyway,

enough of Sunday morning raving.

Yes?

On the time wave,

it's getting down

into our own,

the individual,

we didn't get that far down.

I take it

that the time wave

is actually fixed

for everyone, right?

Well, the big wave,

the wave we were looking at.

The big wave is,

how much can it then,

if you look at it,

if you zoom on down?

Right.

That's an interesting question.

I sort of feel,

I see,

and I've worked out

the theory

of how it could be applied

to the individual,

but I'm a little less

comfortable with it.

I don't hear the logos

booming in my ears

when I did that part

of the work.

Astrology

underwent

a kind of similar

crisis,

if you want to put it

that way.

Originally,

astrology

was to

chart

basically the course

of kings,

of reigns,

of kings,

and kings

were assumed

to be macrocosms

of society.

So really,

astrology

was created

to chart

the destiny

of nations

and peoples.

In the Renaissance,

with the birth

of the idea

of the individual,

really,

people for the first

time began

to think of,

well,

what about

my horoscope?

You know?

And really,

I think the evolution

of the personal horoscope,

although I'm sure

astrologers will rise

in a single body

to shout this down,

but the rise

of the individual

horoscope

is essentially

a capitalist

phenomenon

where you then

create a product

that can be dealt.

because if you're

only casting

horoscopes

for the court,

pretty soon

there aren't

too many horoscopes

needing to be cast.

The way you do it

with the time wave,

if you want to get

your individual wave,

is the way

I think

of the big wave

that we looked

at yesterday

is that it

is in a sense

the average

of all

the little waves,

that we each

are a little wave,

and when you

average them

all together

you get

the big wave,

sort of the way

if you have

enough atoms

of gold

and you put

them together

pretty soon

you have

an ingot

of gold,

and the ingot

of gold

has a different

architecture

than gold atoms,

but it's made

of gold atoms.

Anyway,

the way you do

that for an

individual

is you take

your birth date

and you add

67 years,

104.25 days,

that's one cycle,

you add that

to your birth date

and you enter

that as the

end date

rather than

December 22nd,

2012,

you add that,

you use that

as the end date

and then you

look back

kitchen.

your life. Now what this implies is that at age 67 years, 104.25 days, you have an excellent

opportunity to die. If you miss this opportunity, there won't be such a good opportunity as that

for 67 more years. So you sort of have to, I don't know, I don't take this stuff seriously

and neither should you. Yes. Well, in a way, what this is just showing you the architecture of the

hologram. You know how one of the interesting features of a hologram is when you cut a little

piece out of it, you have the whole thing. You can cut a square out of the middle of a hologram

and when you illuminate that little square, the whole thing is still there. This is the magic of

the hologram, that all of the information is distributed through each point on the hologram.

And you can take that little square and cut a little square out of it and illuminate it and the whole

hologram will be there. Now what you're losing in this is resolution. The detail gets dimmer and dimmer,

but the major outlines remain. This is a quality of fractals. You see information in a hologram is

distributed according to what mathematicians call a Fourier transform. And when you analyze Fourier

transforms, they turn out to be a kind of fractal. So these resonances that I was showing you yesterday,

where we see how the Third Reich relates to ancient Egypt and stuff like that, well that's a very,

that's a one-day course in the time wave version of how these resonances work. Really, there are hundreds,

hundreds, there are dozens of major resonances and thousands of minor resonances that go in to

making up a given moment. So if we were to like analyze this moment in high detail, we would build trees of

resonances of less and less input, but still present, that would show us the situation in great complexity.

Because, you know, many, many times are present, all time, ultimately, if you draw the resonance trees

out far enough, you discover all time is present in every moment. Eternity in a grain of sand,

wasn't that William Blake's rap? That's the bottom line of all of these theories, is that the whole history of the universe is contained,

contained, recapitulated, and, and somehow present in every moment, or every year, or

every millennium, or every million years. It's a series of hologramized, refractive, fractalized,

self-referentiality is what it is. Yeah, each thing in its time.

Well, you know, I was, in a way, I was very interested in synchronicity in my youth. That's sort of what got me started reading Jung.

But the more time I spent reading philosophy, and especially philosophy of science relative to time,

I came to realize that synchronicity, as presented by Jung, is, is not an explanation of anything.

It's the name of a phenomenon, but it is no explanation. In fact, it tells you there is no explanation.

The explanation is, there is no explanation. It's simply synchronicity.

P. W. Bridgman, in a book called The Theory of Natural Law, made a statement, which has always guided me in this kind of model building.

He said, a coincidence is what you have left over when you apply a bad theory.

You see how that works?

Yeah, you have to be able to perceive, almost schizophrenically.

You have to see. I mean, you have to see. We were talking, or it's, his name has been bandied about this weekend, Philip K. Dick.

What happened to Phil was that the resonance became stronger than the reality, or it became equal in strength, so that he, by squinting, he could see, you know, second century Rome.

Everybody changed into people wearing togas and speaking Demotic Greek and everything.

Well, that was the resonance of where he was at, but when the resonance comes forward with such strength that the foreground is displaced,

they have a name for that, bug-o, and, you know, you have to, you got to watch that.

On the other hand, if you can control it, it's a source of great richness and inner amusement, just to see, you know, somebody comes scrambling up who needs their book signed,

and you notice that, you know, and you notice that, you know, who you've got in front of you is Charlie Chaplin, or Adolf Hitler, or some, you know, everyone has these people inside them, and they come and go on the surface.

You aren't who you think you are. You aren't even who you think you aren't.

I mean, it's very, very tricky, yeah. That's the idea, yeah, to map and all that.

And it could be for a person.

It can be done.

Yeah, because, see, here's the thing. If there were only one wave, then it would be my difficult task to explain to you why we aren't all always doing the same things at the same time.

How can, for instance, imagine a situation where, on the day people, on the day people land on the moon, you lose your job.

Well, how, you haven't really shared in this wonderful forward step into new dimensions of freedom.

Instead, you've been reduced to poverty, misery, and anxiety.

How come it means that while the big wave was moving deeper into novelty, your personal wave was moving in the opposite direction?

One of the great things, I think, is to have your own wave in sync or in resonance with the big wave.

I've noticed that very strongly. Like, I've been thinking for months and months that I needed to get a better disk drive.

So, finally, I look at my bank account and I decide, okay, it looks like I can just squeak through and I'll get this thing.

So, I buy it. I bring it home. I flip on NPR and they say, sales of durable goods are rising.

You're rising up and you're rising up.

And it's like, you know, you're rising up against all the world.

You're rising up with all the world.

And I say, you know, I believe that, I'm saying, I'm saying, you know, I'm saying, you're rising up to the spectrum.

But I'm saying, that's why, I don't want to be rising up.

But on the end, I'm thinking about that, you know, what you're starting to look at the magic of a crisis.

I mean, on this island, you can find Amazonian Indians,

you can find Sufi saints, you can find Satanists.

It's all here, probably within walking distance of where we're sitting.

Yeah, synchronicity, coincidence, all that stuff is very peculiar.

I remember, this will be the last anecdote,

I was in a restaurant a few years ago in Malibu

with a bunch of Hollywood people

and there was this woman there, this French woman

and she wasn't terribly hip

but she had been introduced by somebody to my shtick

and so we were all there

and she said,

this mushroom, you say that it speaks to you

but I don't understand, speak, what do you mean?

And I said, well, you know, it can take on various persona.

For instance, I'm thinking since she was a film producer

I should appeal to her industry.

I said, remember the role that Steiger played in The Pawn Broker?

Well, sometimes the mushroom is like that

and at that moment, Steiger leaned across the table

to be introduced to everybody

and I, so then we all shook hands with Rod Steiger

he went back to his table

and Ralph Abraham, who had been sitting across from this French woman and I

watching this whole thing

leaned over and said to me

you see, Terrence

it's just the mushroom's way of showing you

that it can reach out and touch you anywhere

anyway

it is, it does, the mushroom is very much like Rod Steiger

I said to it once

what are you doing

on this planet

he said, listen

you're a mushroom, you live cheap

this was not such a bad neighborhood

till the monkeys went nuts

which is true, actually

all right

we've probably staved off serious work

just about as long as we can

unless someone

insists

no

okay

well, today's thing is sort of a return to a more

orthodox, educational kind of mode

hopefully not to such a degree that it's boring

but the agenda is to talk about

hermeticism and alchemy

the way in which this tradition

which is counterintuitive

and

heterodox

if not heretical

from the point of view of Christianity

and

you know, what it can mean for the present

what it means for the psychedelic experience

what it means for the notion

of

the end of history

and how the loss of this point of view

has probably done us

a certain amount of damage

the

great tension

in the middle ages

was between

the late middle ages

was between the

magical

schema

the magical view

of human beings

and the

Christian view

and the Christian view

is very strongly marked

by the idea that

of man's fall

that

we screwed up

early on

and somehow then

by virtue of that

we're forced into a secondary position

in the cosmic drama

we are doing penance

as we speak

the world is a veil of tears

the lot of human beings

is to till

hard land

and

you know

we are cursed

unto the 19th generation

or something like that

by the fall of

our first parents

and we

can be redeemed

this is I'm giving you

the Christian wrath

we can be redeemed

through Christ

but we don't deserve it

it is

if you are saved

it is because

there is

a kind of

a hand

extended to you

from a merciful God

who is willing to overlook

your wormy nature

and draw you up

in spite of yourself

and this is

deep in us

no matter how

you know

whether you're

you may not think

you've bought in

because you're black

or because you're

Chinese

or something

but

it's just in the air

we breathe

it's what western civilization

makes you think

whether you want to

think it or not

you know

even if you don't come out

of these traditions

for us

that's the concept

of

that you've got to

pay your dues

that's what it comes down

to

the idea that

human beings

are co-partners

with deity

in the project

of being

this is the basis

of all

magic

you see

in a Christian context

magic

is heresy

because it implies

that

that man

can command

God

to act

in other words

that in some strange

way

the magician

compels nature

to behave

as the magician

desires

in hermeticism

it isn't so much

put in terms

of compel

but the idea

is

that

humanity

human beings

men and women

of great spiritual

accomplishment

are co-partners

in the project

of being

and that

God

as it were

stepped off

the stage

of creation

with it

only

ninety percent

completed

and the rest

is left

in the hands

of his

brother

the hermetica

actually refers

to humanity

as the brother

of God

so

it's a completely

different

attitude

toward being

human

it's an empowering

attitude

with power

comes the potential

to abuse

power

because you're

no longer

a worm

you remember

that image

in Jonathan

Edward's

sermon

sinners

in the hands

of an angry

God

where he says

you're like

a worm

suspended

over an abyss

held there

only by

the

love

of a

merciful

God

implying

that if he

weren't a

merciful God

he'd just

let go

of your

thread

and you'd

go down

the tubes

in the

hermetic

magical

view

human beings

are not

tainted

by original

sin

and no

no ideology

is without

the potential

of abuse

the hermetic

attitude

in the

renaissance

was summed up

in a single

aphorism

by the great

renaissance

platonist

Marcello

Ficino

and what

he said

was

and I

have to

you know

there's no

sexism

in all

of this

you just

have to

realize

these guys

were primitive

types

and they

hadn't

confronted

the

political

issues

we've

confronted

so when

they say

man

they mean

humanity

the renaissance

magical

attitude

is summed

up in

Ficino's

aphorism

man

is the

measure

of all

things

and this

is

this is a

double-edged

sword

because in

a single

affirmation

you cast

off

the guilt

trip

you cast

off the

view of

ourselves

as a

flawed

creature

but when

you say

man is the

measure of

all things

I mean

you could

be

the chairman

of the

board of

Louisiana

Pacific

or Dow

Chemical

I mean

this is

approximately

their

attitude

in other

words

it ain't

rainforests

it's not

the life

of the

earth

it's none

of that

malarkey

we are

to be

the measure

of all

things

so it

has to be

tempered

we'll

probably

end up

talking a

bit here

about

what is

about

the

pathological

expression

of the

hermetic

position

which is

called

Faustianism

and

Faustianism

is where

you have

unbridled

ego

unbridled

faith

in the

intellect

so that

you

you proceed

forward

without

self-doubt

if you

haven't read

Faust

recently

it's a

surprising

read

first of

all

you know

it's

very

funny

it's

hilarious

it's

funnier

than

any

of

Shakespeare's

plays

I

think

and

the

way

it

ends

is

in

the

guy

dedicates

himself

to

land

reclamation

and the

draining

of

swamps

to

build

low-cost

housing

for

poor

people

and

people

don't

know

this

they're

caught

up

in

the

images

of

the

center

of

the

story

where

you

know

magical

power

is

running

rampant

but

Faust's

final

conclusion

is

that

he

should

do

some

good

work

for

the

least

of

society

and

give

up

these

Promethean

and

titanic

dreams

of

the

mastery

of

power

well

a little

bit of

history

about

this

hermetic

ideal

it's

an

interesting

story

in the

light

of our

discussion

of

time

yesterday

western

civilization

in a

way

can be

thought

of

as

an

accumulated

series

of

misunderstandings

and

one of

the

most

severe

of

these

misunderstandings

has to

do

with

this

whole

business

of

hermeticism

the

renaissance

really

believed

that

Hermes

Trismegistus

was

a

great

teacher

of

antiquity

who

preceded

Moses

who

was

in

time

older

than

Moses

and

they

had

what

they

called

the

Prisci

Theologica

the

three

theologians

and

they

were

Hermes

Trismegistus

Moses

and

Orpheus

in

that

order

and

the

reason

that I

say

western

civilization

is built

on a

series

of

misunderstandings

is because

they

got it

all

wrong

about

Hermes

Trismegistus

and

there

was

great

confusion

and

unhappiness

in the

16th century

when

Marie

Casabon

who

was

an

early

philologist

attacked

the

dating

of

the

Hermetic

Corpus

and

argued

correctly

that

this

could

not

possibly

have

been

written

in a

period

preceding

Moses

that

in

fact

this

was

post

Christian

written

no

earlier

than

the

first

century

AD

this

is

the

equivalent

of

us

finding

out

that

you

know

George

Washington

was alive

in

Greenwich

Village

in

the

1930s

or

something

I mean

it was

a

completely

mind

bending

realignment

of how

people

thought

the

history

of

the

world

had

unfolded

because

they

had

up to

that

time

thought

that

when

you

studied

Hermes

Trismegistus

you were

reading

the oldest

philosopher

in

human

history

actually

it's

very

the magical

alternative

the

advent

of

modern

philology

showed

that

these

so-called

ancient

texts

were not

ancient

at all

they were

late

Roman

they were

Hellenistic

and

so

strongly

was

imprinted

in the

western

mind

what's

called

and we've

talked about

it here

this

weekend

what's

called

the

nostalgia

for

paradise

in

other

words

the

belief

that

the

older

it

is

the

better

it

is

and

Guillain

Battista

Vico

in

La

Ciencia

Nuova

laid

the

basis

for

this

kind

of

thinking

it's

called

classicism

in

the

Renaissance

context

so

once

they

finished

and

science

was

able

to

use

the

confusion

in

the

magical

community

at that

point

to

force

its

own

agenda

very

strongly

and

there

were

numerous

episodes

of

misplaced

dating

like this

that have

contributed

to the

confusion

around

the history

of magic

for example

and I

hope

this

doesn't

bring

somebody

rising

out

of

their

chair

in

an

air

clawing

rave

but

Rosicrucianism

rests

on a

whole bunch

of

phony

dates

because

they

want

to

tell

you

that

somebody

named

Christian

Rosencrantz

wrote

a book

called

The

Chemical

Wedding

and

sealed

it up

in a

time

capsule

in

the

12th

century

and

that

it

was

then

dug

up

in

the

15th

16th

dug

up

in

the

16th

century

but

actually

all

these

Rosicrucian

documents

were

ponied

up

by

people

in

the

16th

century

who

had

a

very

complicated

political

agenda

which

we

will

probably

discuss

as

part

of

this

weekend

hermetic

philosophy

is based

on what

is called

the

hermetic

corpus

this

is a

group

of

books

the

most

important

of

which

is

called

the

Asclepius

and

these

books

most

of

them

were

completely

lost

during

the

middle

ages

at

the

fall

of

systematically

destroyed

by

enthusiastic

Christian

barbarians

and

the

hermetic

manuscripts

were

scattered

and they

only

survived

then

in

monasteries

in

Syria

and

places

like

that

well

then

in

the

renaissance

the

council

of

Florence

under

the

patronage

of

the

Borgias

and

people

like

that

they

became

very

there

was

this

great

interest

suddenly

in

antiquities

because

these

Roman

statuary

and stuff

was coming

out of

the

ground

so

the

council

of

Florence

commissioned

a

character

named

Gemistus

Platho

to go

to Syria

and bring

back

these

manuscripts

and

they

established

a

translation

commission

and

they

had

in

manuscript

the

works

of

Plato

the

works

of

Hermes

Trismegistus

a whole

bunch

of

ancient

literature

and to

show

you

what

the

psychology

of the

renaissance

was

here

they

had

Plato

which

they

hadn't

been

able

to

read

for

a

thousand

years

sitting

there

waiting

for

translation

and

the

Cosimo

de

Medici

said

to

Marcello

Ficino

Plato

can

wait

translate

the

hermetic

corpus

first

and so

it was

done

if you're

interested

in

renaissance

hermeticism

you can't

do better

than read

Dame

Frances

Yeats'

book

Giordano

Bruno

and

the

hermetic

tradition

well

I want

to

read

you

some

of

this

stuff

because

it's

very

interesting

and it

has

a

modernity

that is

astonishing

it's also

very

psychedelic

here's a

little

passage

on

the

imagination

I'm

reading

from

book

nine

of

the

corpus

hermeticum

in

the

scott

translation

this is

a

four

volume

set

I

only

brought

the

text

and

translation

volume

but

if you

read

Greek

it's

all

here

if

you

don't

it's

all

here

in

English

but

this

will

just

give

you

to

God

you

cannot

apprehend

God

for

like

is

known

by

like

leap

clear

of

all

that

is

corporeal

and

make

yourself

to

a

like

expanse

with

that

greatness

which

is

beyond

all

measure

rise

above

all

time

and

become

eternal

then

you

will

apprehend

God

think

that

for

you

too

nothing

is

impossible

deem

that

you

too

are

immortal

and

that

you

are

able

to

grasp

all

things

in

your

thought

to

know

every

craft

and

every

science

find

your

home

in

the

haunts

of

every

living

creature

make

yourself

higher

than

all

heights

and

lower

than

all

depths

bring

together

in

yourself

all

up

you

of quality heat and cold dryness and fluidity think that you are everywhere at once on land at

sea in heaven think that you are not yet begotten that you are in the womb that you are young that

you are old that you have died that you are in the world beyond the grave grasp in your thought all

this at once all times and places all substances and qualities and magnitudes together then you can

apprehend God but if you shut up your soul in your body and abase yourself and say I know nothing I can

do nothing I am afraid of earth and sea I cannot mount to heaven I know not what I was nor what I

shall be then what have you to do with God your thought can grasp nothing good if you cleave to

the body and are evil interesting very different from the humble yourself hard labor spun wool and

watery beer approach of medieval Christianity here's an amazing passage you know people like to think

people thought the world was flat until the Renaissance this is a an incredible psychedelic

image of outer space that is second century AD would that it were possible for you to grow wings and soar

into the air poised between earth and heaven you might see the solid earth the fluid sea and the streaming

rivers the wandering air the penetrating fire the courses of the stars and the swiftness of the

movement with which heaven encompasses all what happiness were that my son to see all these born along with one

impulse and to behold him who is unmoved moving and all that moves and him who is hidden made manifest through

his works and it goes on and on it's very readable it's very literary it's highly poetic it's a celebration of

nature the notion of sin is completely absent and it rings with a kind of confidence a kind of joy that was

completely running counter to the brimstone and damnation point of view of Christianity

point of view of Christianity here's a a a to me a psychedelic passage but he who presents all things to us through

our senses and thereby manifest himself through all things and in all things and especially to those to whom he wills to

manifest himself begin then my son taught with a prayer to the Lord and father who alone is good pray that you may find

favor with him and that one ray of him if only one may flash into your mind so that you may have power to grasp in

thought that mighty being for thought alone can see that which is hidden inasmuch as thought itself is hidden from sight and if even the

thought which is within you is hidden from your sight how can he being in himself be manifest to you through your bodily

eyes but if you have power to see with the eyes of the mind then my son he will manifest himself to you for the Lord

manifests himself ungrudgingly through all the universe and you can behold God's image with your eyes and lay hold on it with your

hands if you wish to see him think on the sun think on the course of the moon think on the order of the stars who is it that

maintains that order the sun is the greatest of the gods in heaven to him as to their king and overlord and all the kings of

heaven yield place and yet this mighty God greater than earth and sea submits to having smaller stars circling above

him who is it then my son that he always obeys with reverence and all each of these stars too is confined by

measured limits and has an appointed space to range in why do not all the stars in heaven run like and equal courses who

who is it that is assigned to each its place and marked out for each the extent of its course and

so forth so it's it's a nature oriented celebratory it glories in the exercise of the mind it is not

it is not doctrinal it is not

pietistic it is magical psychedelic expansive and I'm not implying that they used psychedelic substances the

evidence for that is incredibly murky and hard to get at and probably they didn't I mean one of the real

real tragedies of Western history is that Western Europe is so poor in psychoactive plants I mean had had

Western Europe stayed in touch with the mystery religions of ancient Greece Christianity would never have been

been able to force its agenda to the degree that it did I think you can make an argument that there were

psychedelic mysteries in Europe probably up until the time of the fall of Eleusis Hermeticism is only one

heterodox strain among many that were in existence in Europe in the late Roman period and that then partially

survived into the dark ages I mean you have Neoplatonism which is a group of philosophers in the in the third and

fourth century who Plotinus Porphyry Proclus and that crowd and they took Plato the late Plato and contorted

that into a mystical doctrine of emanation they were what are called emanationists what this means is you start with it's

it's either called the one or the unnameable or Brahman Atman or something like that and then you have a series of

declensions into more and more material and more and more multiplistic expressions of being these Neoplatonists were

emanationists and their theories about how the universe is constructed have become sort of the unconscious basis of all

later magical speculation if they are the people who brought the angels into the picture so so intensely because they were trying to create a

descending hierarchy of being from the most high down to the most low and angels once set in place became a real problem for

Christianity because they are not very easy to distinguish from the old stellar demons of the of paganism paganism

paganism was largely the belief that the power of the stars could be drawn down to earth through a series through sympathetic magic really by setting up

resonances

resonances in a ritual situation you could draw the power of the stars down into your projects and your intentions and

the late middle ages was a period of

intensity of intensely working out all the associations between

minerals colors perfumes plants musical notes and you know styles so that you could then bring together all these things for purposes of magical evocation

evocation and if any of you are interested in this the the book to read which will point you toward many other interesting books is a wonderful book called spiritual and demonic magic from

Ficino to campanella some of you may remember campanella hell of a fighter anyway hello and in the Renaissance you know over a period of about three generations ago

this became a real problem because what starts out as angel magic ends up as out and out demonic conjuration something which I've noticed my 14 year old son has an incredibly unhealthy interest in which I did as well at his age I hope it's not the family curse coming back

coming back

yeah

so

I mentioned the dating error it was lactantius was one of the fathers of the early church one of the patristic writers that's that generation of theologians that followed Christ who canonized the Christian religion and he placed he placed

Hermes Trismegistus as older than Moses older than Pythagoras older than Plato and

and then it wasn't until Marie Cassabon corrected that problem see we forget how the the really transformative breakthrough that was represented for Western Europe by the recovery of all of this

of all of this ancient literature it had been completely lost and also a misimpression that probably needs correcting is I think most people who are not schooled in Western history think that the further back in time the more quote unquote superstitious people were this isn't actually

the case it isn't a case of the further back in time you go the more belief in demons magical conjuration and stuff like that you get the 10th 11th and 12th centuries in Europe were periods of remarkable piety and intellectual cohesion of course it was also some kind of a fascist nightmare that's how they achieved it they had stamped out

they had stamped out paganism they had pushed heresy and heterodox thinking to the very distant frontiers of the Empire of the you know the Holy Roman Empire and people were not superstitious and people were not obsessed with horoscopes and conjuration and this sort of thing where that all began was

was well where it reached its culmination is in the 16th century the 16th century the 1500s it was the most magical obsessed century in the last 10 and alchemy and conjuration and talismanic magic and sympathetic magic all of these things flourished

flourished really uh not as a um throwback but as a kind of prelude to modern science modern science is an incredibly demonic enterprise

and we will see as we will see as we discuss this stuff that in an incurious and little rarely discussed way the program uh the agenda of magical dissidents in Europe have been entirely achieved by the forces of what we call modernity it's simply that it has been done in an entirely secular metaphor

I mean if you take even the trivial belief about alchemists that they were concerned with changing lead into gold

of course that isn't what it was about but there were plenty of con artists running around on the periphery of these deeper scenes who were claiming they could change lead into gold

well in the 20th century we routinely change lead to gold you do it with neutron bombardment in particle accelerators and of course it costs far more to do it than the worth of the gold that you get out but that really wasn't the point was it it was to prove that it could be done the dreams of creating the homunculus

uh our dreams uh our dreams that dovetail directly into the aspirations of modern biology genetics so forth and so on uh the the great chain of being of aristotle is animated given a dimension of motion and lo and behold it becomes the darwin wallace theory of evolution uh

uh the marsiliad talks about this about how all the alchemical dreams of the 15th and 16th century have been brought to fruition in the 20th century but again in the absence of magical rhetoric but certainly in a spirit of magical and faustian recklessness for sure

for sure i mean this is scientists you know they claim such a devotion to truth that decency must never stand in the way because they serve a higher god than human values they serve the golem of the truth in some weird way that makes the truth

okay even if it kills you i studied philosophy from paul feiroben and he used to say at the beginning of his epistemology 101 course

i will teach you to recognize the truth and i will teach you to ask the question what's so great about it

you know i mean so now you've got the truth so what's so great about it

uh it was 1460 when these manuscripts were brought to florence those of you with photographic memories can

see the time wave signature as it turns over and heads through the floor uh and uh the um cosmo de medici

immediately ordered facino to abandon his work on plato on plato and uh and the paimander which was one of these uh

books which had been it was the only one which existed in europe uh even in partial form during the dark ages

uh cosmo died in in 1464 but the translation project uh went forward and uh

uh just so you understand the the tree the developmental process in western magic goes basically

all goes back to this florentine translation project and from there people who were well placed got a hold

of this stuff the most important person probably being uh uh a person certainly an unsung hero in the

development of western thought trithemius bishop of sponheim and trithemius uh wrote a book it was

really a manuscript it was never printed as a book in his lifetime but later called the stenographica

and in it he put forth many of these magical doctrines and also encryption methods for code

making and breaking so that this stuff could be circulated under the eyes of the clergy without

causing a problem and then the the development of western magic splits into two strains uh the bruno strain

giordano bruno i understand he's running for president of the united states this year

giordano bruno and his school he was a franciscan monk who ended up being burned at the stake his sin

for which he was burned at the stake was he was sitting on a rooftop of one of these italian city-states

one evening presumably smoking some pretty decent boo that they brought in from north africa and uh

uh he was looking at the stars and he it occurred to him these things are suns these little points of

light are like the sun jesus christ and in a single moment the universe became infinite and he said if

these are suns these are suns and he just you know his mind was boggled literally i mean can you imagine

inside the medieval worldview where they have these concentric shells of angels and demons and the

all this suddenly this guy gets it in a single moment and he sees that the universe is infinite and he

begins to say so and this is against aristotle and the church just goes nuts and they drive him out of

italy and he has a whole bunch of adventures in england and other places eventually he makes the mistake

of coming back to a place in northern italy where he's betrayed by his patron and he is uh he's burned

at the stake for a point of view which all of us take quite for granted the other uh strain of magic

coming down from trithemius is the d strain and it is a bit more accessible to people like ourselves

because john d was an englishman and he wrote in english and so you don't have to conquer

uh 16th century italian or uh or late latin in order to read him although he wrote a lot in latin as

well d is a very interesting character worth spending some time on because d is the last person to be able to

unify into one world view uh science and mathematics and magic and astrology uh all together so he is the greatest

magician of his age and the greatest scientist of his age he designed the navigation instruments that sir

francis drake used to go around uh the uh the cape horn and sail up the coast of california he did he was a

an intelligence operative serving queen elizabeth uh on the european continent he could cast the best

horoscope in europe and that was his entree into these various royal families of these various capital

cities of europe and then he was you know making maps of of battlements and of the deployment of war

facilities and ship building capacity and stuff like that and sending it all back to elizabeth

uh in these codes that he had learned from trithemius not personally but from the stenographica

and d uh a very strange incident happened which was uh on a cold day in april at his house in mortlake

which is on the outskirts of london now it's completely surrounded by modern london uh

i should say he had he had the largest library in england he had six thousand books

sir philip sidney and the queen would occasionally call upon him to shoot the bull and he he was a

very learned man so one day in april of 1582 he's working at his desk at his room in mortlake and he goes

outside he's there's some disturbance in the garden and he goes outside and his story and we have only his

story is that an angel descended in a ball of light and gave him an object which is uh to this day on exhibit

in the british museum if you ever have a chance it's worth hunting it down it's in the renaissance hall

and it's uh it's a piece of black polished obsidian uh roughly about this big and about that thick and

very highly polished it he called it the show stone s-h-e-w and what the deal was was you could look into

the show stone if you had the right talent and you it was a magical theater there were gods and demons

and uh female spirits and all kinds of things swirling around this thing well for the next uh

many years the show stone was the major guiding force on d's life and a guy came to him named edward kelly

and edward kelly uh legend has it that he had no ears which in england at that time meant that you had

committed some infraction in the province and they had removed your ears it was the mark of a con artist

was so you couldn't fool anybody else they took your ears off so then if you met somebody with no ears and a

big scheme you knew to keep your wallet in your pocket so so this guy kelly had an immense facility with

this show stone i mean he could just sit down with it and it is one of the most puzzling and undiscussed

episodes in the evolution of western thought the straight people just say whoa this is a bunch of crap you

you know this guy kelly first of all d was married to a much younger woman named ann d and at one point

in the 10 years or so that d and kelly were together the angels of the show stone uh gave very explicit

instructions that d should allow kelly to uh

he says in the light of god's will it was done in his diary so this guy was a sharpie for sure

however it's it's very puzzling because if he was if he was a con artist he must have been a con artist of

immense uh cleverness because often the way the d angels would work is they would deliver very very

long messages in latin backwards and kelly kelly would just dictate this stuff at a very rapid speed

and d would write it down and then they would put away the show stone and then they would very laboriously

rewrite this stuff from back to front and then there would be these long coherent harangues

about what they should be doing about which courtly figures they should uh support with money and who

should be introduced to who it was very political you know well what kind of a polymathic talent was

edward kelly that he could invert whole pages of latin and reel it off and then have it be

reconstructed and make sense also there are you see this we know about this because d kept a diary

over the years that this was all going on it's one of the most astonishing books

in all of english literature and until the last 10 years the 1658 edition was the only edition ever

published uh it's called a true and faithful relation or in full a true and faithful relation of what

passed for many years between dr d and some spirits with annotation by maric cassabon the guy who did the

correct dating on the hermetica and it's very interesting reading it's as i say one of the most puzzling instant

incidents in the whole history of science what d was doing

was eventually he came to rest at the court of rudolph the second rudolph the first of of bohemia who ruled

from prague now you have to understand is that a hand up yeah not strong enough to to warrant any getting

a hand up yeah i'm thrilled about it uh the great awareness of drug use came slightly later uh and

strangely enough uh the drug was opium uh it's an instance it's interesting the history of opium you

know we think of of uh opium and its derivatives uh junk and heroin as just the lowest well maybe crack is now

the lowest of the low but anyway it's a real scuzzball drug according to most people's opinion but did

you know that no they had been using opium for 3 000 years before anybody noticed that it was an addicting

drug it was not ever noted that opium was addicting until 1611 when john playfair a very famous english

physician wrote a book in which he commented on opium and said once one has begun the habit of opium it must be

maintained done to death so uh in the in the 30 years after d there was a great hermeticist and alchemical

thinker named paracelsus who arose on the european continent paracelsus is an interesting guy he's

essentially the inventor of drugs because he was the first person to extract herbs and to get this notion

of the essence of the essence that there's that if you have a medicinal

you

plant, then there's something in there which you want to get out and concentrate. He called his

school of alchemy iatrochemistry, the doctor's chemistry. And he invented pills of the ordinary

sort. And he said, I have made a great discovery. The center of my alchemical opus rests with the

magic of laudanum, which was, of course, gum opium. There was a craze in the late 15th century among

alchemists for opium. The alchemist von Helmut, he signed some of his alchemical tracts,

Dr. Opiatus. He was the first croaker. Yeah. Did it, you say? The idea that human beings

are co-partners with deity in the project of being. This is the basis of all magic. You see,

in a Christian context, magic is heresy because it implies that man can command God to act.

In other words, that in some strange way, the magician compels nature to behave as the magician

desires. In hermeticism, it isn't so much put in terms of compel, but the idea is that humanity,

human beings, men and women of great spiritual accomplishment, are co-partners in the project

of being. And that God, as it were, stepped off the stage of creation with it only 90% completed.

And the rest is left in the hands of his brother. The Hermetica actually refers to humanity as the

brother of God. So it's a completely different attitude toward being human. It's an empowering

attitude. With power comes the potential to abuse power, because you're no longer a worm.

You remember that image in Jonathan Edwards' sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,

where he says, you're like a worm suspended over an abyss, held there only by the love of a merciful God,

implying that if he weren't a merciful God, he'd just let go of your thread and you'd go down the tubes.

In the hermetic magical view, human beings are not tainted by original sin.

And no ideology is without the potential of abuse. The hermetic attitude in the Renaissance was summed up in a single aphorism

by the great Renaissance Platonist, Marcello Ficino. And what he said was, and I have to, you know,

there's no sexism in all of this. You just have to realize these guys were primitive types, and they hadn't

confronted the political issues we've confronted. So when they say man, they mean humanity.

The Renaissance magical attitude is summed up in Ficino's aphorism, man is the measure of all things.

And this is a double-edged sword, because in a single affirmation, you cast off the guilt trip.

You cast off the view of ourselves as a flawed creature.

But when you say man is the measure of all things, I mean, you could be the chairman of the board of

Louisiana Pacific or Dow Chemical. I mean, this is approximately their attitude.

In other words, it ain't rainforests. It's not the life of the earth. It's none of that malarkey.

We are to be the measure of all things.

So it has to be tempered.

We'll probably end up talking a bit here about what is about the pathological expression of the hermetic position,

which is called Faustianism.

And Faustianism is where you have unbridled ego, unbridled faith in the intellect,

so that you proceed forward without self-doubt.

If you haven't read Faust recently, it's a surprising read.

First of all, you know, it's very funny.

It's hilarious.

It's funnier than any of Shakespeare's plays, I think.

And the way it ends is in the guy dedicates himself to land reclamation and the draining of swamps

to build low-cost housing for poor people.

I mean, people don't know this.

They're caught up in the images of the center of the story where, you know, magical power is running rampant.

But Faust's final conclusion is that he should do some good work for the least of society

and give up these Promethean and titanic dreams of the mastery of power.

Well, a little bit of history about this hermetic ideal.

It's an interesting story in the light of our discussion of time yesterday.

Western civilization, in a way, can be thought of as an accumulated series of misunderstandings.

And one of the most severe of these misunderstandings has to do with this whole business of hermeticism.

The Renaissance really believed that Hermes Trismegistus was a great teacher of antiquity

who preceded Moses, who was in time older than Moses.

And they had what they called the Prisci Theologica, the three theologians.

And they were Hermes Trismegistus, Moses, and Orpheus, in that order.

And the reason that I say Western civilization is built on a series of misunderstandings

is because they got it all wrong about Hermes Trismegistus.

And there was great confusion and unhappiness in the 16th century

when Marie-Casabon, who was an early philologist,

attacked the dating of the Hermetic corpus

and argued correctly

that this could not possibly have been written in a period preceding Moses.

That, in fact, this was post-Christian,

written no earlier than the first century A.D.

This is the equivalent of us finding out that, you know,

George Washington was alive in Greenwich Village in the 1930s or something.

I mean, it was a completely mind-bending realignment

of how people thought the history of the world had unfolded

because they had, up to that time, thought that

when you studied Hermes Trismegistus,

you were reading the oldest philosopher in human history.

Actually, it's very late.

And in a way, this is what destroyed the magical alternative.

The advent of modern philology showed that these so-called ancient texts

were not ancient at all.

They were late Roman.

They were Hellenistic.

And so strongly was imprinted in the Western mind

what's called, and we've talked about it here this weekend,

what's called the nostalgia for paradise.

In other words, the belief that the older it is, the better it is.

And Guillaume Battista Vico in La Ciencia Nuova laid the basis for this kind of thinking.

It's called classicism in the Renaissance context.

So once they found out that the Hermetic Corpus had been written in late Roman times,

it was like it was finished.

And science was able to use the confusion in the magical community at that point

to force its own agenda very strongly.

And there have been numerous episodes of misplaced dating like this

that have contributed to the confusion around the history of magic.

For example, and I hope this doesn't bring somebody rising out of their chair

in an air-clawing rave,

but Rosicrucianism rests on a whole bunch of phony dates

because they want to tell you that somebody named Christian Rosencrantz

wrote a book called The Chemical Wedding

and sealed it up in a time capsule in the 12th century

and that it was then dug up in the 15th,

15th?

16th, dug up in the 16th century.

But actually all these Rosicrucian documents

were ponied up by people in the 16th century

who had a very complicated political agenda,

which we will probably discuss as part of this weekend.

Hermetic philosophy is based on what is called the Hermetic Corpus.

This is a group of books,

the most important of which is called the Asclepius.

And these books, most of them,

were completely lost during the Middle Ages.

At the fall of the Roman Empire,

copies of these Hermetic manuscripts

were systematically destroyed

by enthusiastic Christian barbarians.

And the Hermetic manuscripts were scattered

and they only survived then in monasteries in Syria

and places like that.

Well, then, in the Renaissance,

the Council of Florence,

under the patronage of the Borgias

and people like that,

they became very...

There was this great interest suddenly in antiquities

because these Roman statuary and stuff

was coming out of the ground.

So, the Council of Florence commissioned a character

named Gemistasis Platho

to go to Syria and bring back these manuscripts.

And they established a translation commission.

And they had, in manuscript,

the works of Plato,

the works of Hermes Trismegistus,

a whole bunch of ancient literature.

And to show you what the psychology of the Renaissance was,

here they had Plato,

which they hadn't been able to read for a thousand years,

sitting there waiting for translation.

And the Cosimo de' Medici said to Marcello Ficino,

Plato can wait.

Translate the Hermetic corpus first.

And so it was done.

If you're interested in Renaissance Hermeticism,

you can't do better than read

Dame Frances Yates' book,

Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition.

Well, I want to read you some of this stuff

because it's very interesting

and it has a modernity that is astonishing.

It's also very psychedelic.

Here's a little passage on the imagination.

I'm reading from Book 9 of the Corpus Hermeticum

in the Scott translation.

This is a four-volume set.

I only brought the text and translation volume.

But if you read Greek, it's all here.

If you don't, it's all here in English.

But this will just give you a feeling for the approach.

If then you do not make yourself equal to God,

you cannot apprehend God.

For like is known by like.

Leap clear of all that is corporeal

and make yourself to a like expanse

with that greatness which is beyond all measure.

Rise above all time and become eternal.

Then you will apprehend God.

Think that for you too, nothing is impossible.

Deem that you too are immortal

and that you are able to grasp all things in your thought

to know every craft and every science.

Find your home in the haunts of every living creature.

Make yourself higher than all heights

and lower than all depths.

Bring together in yourself all opposites of quality,

heat and cold, dryness and fluidity.

Think that you are everywhere at once,

on land, at sea, in heaven.

Think that you are not yet begotten,

that you are in the womb,

that you are young,

that you are old,

that you have died,

that you are in the world beyond the grave.

Grasp in your thought all this at once,

all times and places,

all substances and qualities and magnitudes together.

Then you can apprehend God.

But if you shut up your soul in your body

and abase yourself and say,

I know nothing.

I can do nothing.

I am afraid of earth and sea.

I cannot mount to heaven.

I know not what I was,

nor what I shall be.

Then what have you to do with God?

Your thought can grasp nothing but evil and good

if you cleave to the body and are evil.

Interesting.

Very different from the humble yourself,

hard labor,

spun wool and watery beer approach

of medieval Christianity.

Here's an amazing passage.

You know,

people like to think people thought the world was flat

until the Renaissance.

This is an incredible psychedelic image of outer space

that is second century A.D.

Would that it were possible for you to grow wings

and soar into the air,

poised between earth and heaven,

you might see the solid earth,

the fluid sea and the streaming rivers,

the wandering air,

the penetrating fire,

the courses of the stars

and the swiftness of the movement

with which heaven encompasses all.

What happiness were that, my son,

to see all these born along with one impulse

and to behold him who is unmoved,

moving in all that moves,

and him who is hidden,

made manifest through his works.

And it goes on and on.

It's very readable.

It's very literary.

It's highly poetic.

It's a celebration of nature.

The notion of sin is completely absent.

And it rings with a kind of confidence,

a kind of joy,

that was completely running counter

to the brimstone and damnation point of view

of Christianity.

Here's a, to me,

a psychedelic passage.

But he who presents all things to us

through our senses

and thereby manifests himself

through all things

and in all things

and especially to those

to whom he wills to manifest himself,

begin then, my son,

with a prayer to the Lord and Father

who alone is good.

Pray that you may find favor with him

and that one ray of him,

if only one,

may flash into your mind

so that you may have power

to grasp in thought

that mighty being.

For thought alone

can see that which is hidden

inasmuch as thought itself

is hidden from sight.

And if even the thought

which is within you

is hidden from your sight,

how can he,

being in himself,

be manifest to you

through your bodily eyes?

But if you have power

to see with the eyes

of the mind,

then, my son,

he will manifest himself

to you.

For the Lord manifests himself

ungrudgingly

through all the universe.

And you can behold God's image

with your eyes

and lay hold on it

with your hands.

If you wish to see him,

think on the sun,

think on the course

of the moon,

think on the order

of the stars.

Who is it

that maintains that order?

The sun is the greatest

of the gods in heaven.

To him,

as to their king

and overlord

and all the kings

of heaven yield place.

And yet,

this mighty God,

greater than earth

and sea,

submits to having

smaller stars

circling above him.

Who is it then,

my son,

that he always obeys

with reverence and awe?

Each of these stars,

too,

is confined

by measured limits

and has an appointed space

to range in.

Why do not all the stars

in heaven

run like

and equal courses?

Who is it

that is assigned

to each its place

and marked out

for each

the extent

of its course?

And so forth.

So it's a nature-oriented,

celebratory,

it glories

in the exercise

of the mind.

It is not doctrinal.

It is not

pietistic.

It is magical,

psychedelic,

expansive.

And I'm not implying

that they used

psychedelic substances.

The evidence for that

is incredibly murky

and hard to get at.

And probably they didn't.

I mean,

one of the real tragedies

of Western history

is that Western Europe

is so poor

in psychoactive plants.

I mean,

had Western Europe

stayed in touch

with the mystery religions

of ancient Greece,

Christianity would never

have been able

to force its agenda

to the degree

that it did.

I think you can

make an argument

that there were

psychedelic mysteries

in Europe,

probably up until

the time of the fall

of Eleusis.

Hermeticism

is only one

heterodox strain

among many

that were in existence

in Europe

in the late Roman period

and that then

partially survived

into the Dark Ages.

I mean,

you have

Neoplatonism,

which is

a group

of philosophers

in the third

and fourth century

who,

Plotinus,

Porphyry,

Proclus,

and that crowd.

And they took

Plato,

the late Plato,

and contorted

that into

a mystical doctrine

of emanation.

They were what

are called

emanationists.

What this means

is you start

with,

it's either called

the one

or the unnameable

or Brahman,

Atman,

or something like that,

and then you have

a series of

declensions

into more

and more

material

and more

multiplicity

expressions

of being.

These Neoplatonists

were emanationists

and their theories

about how

the universe

is constructed

have become

sort of

the unconscious

basis

of all

later

magical

speculation.

They are

the people

who brought

the angels

into the picture

so intensely

because they

were trying

to create

a descending

hierarchy

of being

from the

most high

down to the

most low.

And angels

once set

in place

became a real

problem

for Christianity

because they

are not

very easy

to distinguish

from the

old stellar

demons

of paganism.

Paganism

was largely

the belief

that the

power of

the stars

could be

drawn down

to earth

through a

series

through sympathetic

magic

really

by setting

up

resonances

in a ritual

situation

you could

draw the

power of

the stars

down

into your

projects

and your

intentions

and the

late

middle

ages

was a

period

of

intensely

working out

all the

associations

between

minerals

colors

perfumes

plants

musical

notes

and

you know

styles

so that

you could

then bring

together all

these things

for purposes

of magical

evocation

and if any

of you are

interested in

this the

book to

read which

will point

you toward

many other

interesting

books is

a wonderful

book called

spiritual and

demonic

magic from

Ficino to

Campanella

some of you

may remember

Campanella

hell of a

fighter

anyway

hello

and in

the

renaissance

you know

over a

period of

about three

generations

this became

a real

problem

because what

starts out

as angel

magic

ends up

as out

and out

demonic

conjuration

something which

I've noticed

my 14

year old son

has an

incredibly

unhealthy

interest in

which I did

as well

at his

age

I hope

it's not

the family

curse

coming back

yeah

so I

mentioned the

dating error

it was

Lactantius

was one of

the fathers

of the early

church

one of

the patristic

writers

that's that

generation of

theologians

that followed

Christ

who canonized

the Christian

Magistus

as older

than Moses

older than

Pythagoras

older than

Plato

and

and then

it wasn't

until

Marie Kassabon

corrected that

problem

see

we forget

how

the

really

transformative

breakthrough

that was

represented

for western

Europe

by the

recovery

of all

of this

ancient

literature

it had

been

completely

lost

and also

a

misimpression

that probably

needs correcting

is I think

most people

who are not

schooled in

western history

think that

the further

back in

time

the more

quote unquote

superstitious

people were

this isn't

actually

the case

it isn't

the case

of the

further

back in

time you

go

the more

belief

in

demons

magical

conjuration

and stuff

like that

you get

the

10th

11th

and 12th

centuries

in Europe

were periods

of remarkable

piety

and intellectual

cohesion

of course

it was also

some kind

of a fascist

nightmare

that's how

they achieved

it

ramped out

paganism

they had

pushed

heresy

and heterodox

thinking

to the

very distant

frontiers

of the

empire

of the

holy roman

empire

and

people were

not

superstitious

and people

were not

obsessed

with horoscopes

and conjuration

and this

sort of thing

where that

all began

was

well

where it

reached

its culmination

is in

the 16th

century

the 16th

century

the 1500s

it was the

most magical

obsessed

century

in the last

and

alchemy

and

conjuration

and

talismanic

magic

and

sympathetic

magic

all of

these

things

flourished

really

not as

a

throwback

but as

a kind

of prelude

to modern

science

modern science

is an

incredibly

demonic

enterprise

and we

will see

as we

discuss this

stuff

that in

a curious

and little

rarely

discussed

way

the

program

the

agenda

of

magical

dissidents

in Europe

have been

entirely

achieved

by the

forces of

what we

call

modernity

it's

simply

that it

has been

done

in an

entirely

secular

metaphor

I mean

if you

take

even

the

trivial

belief

about

alchemists

that they

were

concerned

with

changing

lead

into

gold

of course

that isn't

what it

was about

but there

were plenty

of con

artists

running around

on the

periphery

of these

deeper

scenes

who were

claiming

they could

change

lead

into

gold

well

in the

20th

century

we

routinely

change

lead

to

gold

you do

it

with

neutron

bombardment

in

particle

accelerators

and of course

it costs

far more

to do it

than the

worth

of the

gold

that you

get out

but that

really wasn't

the point

was it

it

you

was to prove that it could be done.

The dreams of creating the homunculus

are dreams that dovetail directly into the aspirations

of modern biology, genetics, so forth and so on.

The great chain of being of Aristotle

is animated, given a dimension of motion,

and lo and behold, it becomes the Darwin-Wallace theory of evolution.

Marsiliad talks about this,

about how all the alchemical dreams of the 15th and 16th century

have been brought to fruition in the 20th century,

but again, in the absence of magical rhetoric,

but certainly in a spirit of magical and Faustian recklessness,

for sure.

I mean, this is scientists, you know,

they claim such a devotion to truth

that decency must never stand in the way,

because they serve a higher god than human values.

They serve the golem of the truth

in some weird way that makes the truth okay,

okay, even if it kills you.

I studied philosophy from Paul Feyerabend,

and he used to say at the beginning of his Epistemology 101 course,

I will teach you to recognize the truth,

and I will teach you to ask the question,

what's so great about it?

You know, I mean, so now you've got the truth,

so what's so great about it?

It was 1460 when these manuscripts were brought to Florence.

Those of you with photographic memories

can see the time wave signature

as it turns over and heads through the floor,

and the Cosimo de' Medici immediately ordered Ficino

to abandon his work on Plato,

and the Paimander, which was one of these books,

which had been, it was the only one which existed in Europe,

even in partial form during the Dark Ages.

Cosimo died in 1464,

but the translation project went forward,

and just so you understand,

the tree, the developmental process in Western magic

basically all goes back to this Florentine translation project,

and from there, people who were well-placed

got a hold of this stuff.

The most important person probably being

a person, certainly an unsung hero

in the development of Western thought,

Trithemius Bishop of Sponheim,

and Trithemius wrote a book,

it was really a manuscript,

it was never printed as a book in his lifetime,

but later, called the Stenographica,

and in it he put forth

many of these magical doctrines,

and also encryption methods

for code-making and breaking,

so that this stuff could be circulated

under the eyes of the clergy

without causing a problem.

And then,

the development of Western magic

splits into two strains.

The Bruno strain,

Giordano Bruno,

I understand he's running for President

of the United States this year.

Giordano Bruno and his school,

he was a Franciscan monk who ended up being burned at the stake.

His sin for which he was burned at the stake

was he was sitting on a rooftop

of one of these Italian city-states one evening,

presumably smoking some pretty decent boo

that they'd brought in from North Africa.

and he was looking at the stars

and he, it occurred to him,

these things are suns.

These little points of light are like the sun.

Jesus Christ.

And in a single moment,

the universe became infinite.

And he said,

if these are suns,

and he just, you know,

his mind was boggled, literally.

I mean, can you imagine,

inside the medieval worldview

where they have these concentric shells

of angels and demons and all this,

suddenly this guy gets it in a single moment.

And he sees that the universe is infinite.

And he begins to say so.

And this is against Aristotle.

And the church just goes nuts.

And they drive him out of Italy

and he has a whole bunch of adventures in England

and other places.

Eventually he makes the mistake of coming back

to a place in Northern Italy

where he's betrayed by his patron.

And he is,

he's burned at the stake

for a point of view

which all of us take quite for granted.

The other strain of magic

coming down from Trithemius

is the D strain.

And it is a bit more accessible

to people like ourselves

because John Dee was an Englishman.

And he wrote in English.

And so you don't have to conquer

16th century Italian

or late Latin

in order to read him.

Although he wrote a lot in Latin as well.

Dee is a very interesting character

worth spending some time on

because Dee is the last person

to be able to unify

into one world view

science and mathematics

and magic and astrology

all together.

So he is the greatest magician of his age

and the greatest scientist of his age.

He designed the navigation instruments

that Sir Francis Drake used

to go around the Cape Horn

and sail up the coast of California.

He was an intelligence operative

serving Queen Elizabeth

on the European continent.

He could cast the best horoscope in Europe

and that was his entree

into these various royal families

of these various capital cities of Europe.

And then he was, you know,

making maps of battlements

and of the deployment of war facilities

and shipbuilding capacity

and stuff like that

and sending it all back to Elizabeth

in these codes

that he had learned from Trithemius

not personally

but from the Stenographica.

And Dee,

a very strange incident happened

which was on a cold day in April

at his house in Mortlake

which is on the outskirts of London.

Now it's completely surrounded

by modern London.

I should say,

he had the largest library in England.

He had 6,000 books.

Sir Philip Sidney

and the Queen

would occasionally call upon him

to shoot the bull.

And he was a very learned man.

So one day in April of 1582

he's working at his desk

at his room in Mortlake

and he goes outside.

There's some disturbance in the garden

and he goes outside

and his story

and we have only his story

is that an angel

descended in a ball of light

and gave him an object

which is to this day

on exhibit in the British Museum.

If you ever have a chance

it's worth hunting it down.

It's in the Renaissance Hall

and it's a piece of black polished obsidian

roughly about this big

and about that thick

and very highly polished.

He called it the show stone.

S-H-E-W.

And what the deal was

was you could look into the show stone

if you had the right talent

and it was a magical theatre.

There were gods and demons

and female spirits

and all kinds of things swirling around this thing.

Well for the next many years

the show stone was the major guiding force

on Dee's life

and a guy came to him named Edward Kelly

and Edward Kelly

legend has it that he had no ears

which in England at that time meant

that you had committed some infraction in the province

and they had removed your ears.

It was the mark of a con artist.

It was so you couldn't fool anybody else.

They took your ears off.

So then if you met somebody with no ears

in a big scheme

you knew to keep your wallet in your pocket.

So this guy Kelly

had an immense facility

with this show stone.

I mean he could just sit down with it

and it is one of the most puzzling

and undiscussed episodes

in the evolution of western thought.

The straight people just say

whoa this is a bunch of crap

you know this guy Kelly

first of all

Dee was married to a much younger woman

named Ann Dee

and at one point in the ten years or so

that Dee and Kelly were together

the angels of the show stone

gave very explicit instructions

that Dee should allow Kelly

to bury her

and he says

in the light of God's will

it was done

in his diary.

So this guy was a sharpie for sure.

However

it's very puzzling

because if he was a con artist

he must have been a con artist

of immense cleverness

because often the way the Dee angels would work

is they would deliver

very very long messages

in Latin

backwards

and Kelly

Kelly would just dictate this stuff

at a very rapid speed

and Dee would write it down

and then they would put away the show stone

and then they would very laboriously

rewrite this stuff

from back to front

and then there would be these long coherent harangues

about what they should be doing

about which courtly figures

they should support with money

and who should be introduced to who

it was very political

you know

well what kind of a polymathic talent

was Edward Kelly

that he could invert

whole pages of Latin

and reel it off

and then have it be reconstructed

and make sense

also there are

you see this

we know about this

because Dee kept a diary

over the years

and until the last 10 years

the 1658 edition

was the only edition

ever published

it's called

A True and Faithful Relation

or in full

A True and Faithful Relation

of what passed for many years

between Dr. Dee and some spirits

with annotation by Maric Casabon

the guy who

did the correct dating on the Hermetica

and it's very interesting reading

it's as I say

one of the most puzzling incidents

in the whole history of science

what Dee was doing

was eventually

he came to rest

at the court of Rudolf II

Rudolf I

of Bohemia

who ruled from Prague

now you have to understand

is that a hand up

yeah

not strong enough

to warrant

any getting thrilled about it

the great awareness of drug use

came slightly later

and strangely enough

the drug was opium

it's an instance

it's interesting

the history of opium

you know

we think of

opium

and its derivatives

junk

and heroin

as just

the lowest

well maybe crack

is now the lowest

of the low

but anyway

it's a real scuzzball drug

according to most people's opinion

but did you know

that

no

they had been using opium

for 3,000 years

before anybody noticed

that it was an addicting drug

it was not ever noted

that opium was addicting

until 1611

when John Playfair

a very famous English physician

wrote a book

in which he commented on opium

and said

once one has begun the habit of opium

it must be maintained unto death

so

in the

in the 30 years after D

there was a great

hermeticist

and alchemical thinker

named Paracelsus

who arose on the European continent

Paracelsus is an interesting guy

he's

essentially the inventor of drugs

because

he was the first person

to extract herbs

and to get this notion

of the essence

that there's

that

if you have a medicinal plant

then there's something in there

which you want to get out

and concentrate

he called his school of

of alchemy

iatrochemistry

the doctor's chemistry

and he invented pills

of the ordinary sort

and

he said

i have made

a great discovery

the center

of my alchemical opus

rests

with the magic

of laudanum

which was of course

gum opium

there

there was a craze

in the late 15th century

among alchemists

for opium

the

the alchemist

von Helmut

uh

he

he signed

some of his alchemical tracts

Dr. Opiatis

he

he was

the first

croaker

yeah

did it

you say?