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?