Marked by Stars – Agrippa's Occult Philosophy

Post by wddkcs » Thu, Oct 19, 2023, 2:47 AM UTC

bodangly wrote: post #10

jhbadger wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand we really can understand the chemistry that alchemists were fiddling with -- it wasn't metaphorical -- they really were messing around with chemicals and not souls. We still call some things by the names alchemists called them like "aqua regia" (literally "royal water") which is a nixture of nitric and hydrochloric acid that can dissolve gold and platinum. And which they hoped could therefore make m…

That to me is one of the most interesting aspects. Somehow, these people who were deeply spiritual, also were adepts of science, and while we can’t say any of them got it exactly right, the paths intersected enough that their contributions were in some ways foundational. Psychology and psychiatry are two other fields that traveled the path of spirituality and occultism before becoming what we now term modern.

Post by mayd » Thu, Oct 19, 2023, 6:16 AM UTC

jhbadger wrote: post #7

bodangly wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d say it goes beyond not being mutually exclusive. They complement each other, sometimes in surprising ways. Sacred geometry, concepts of frequency and vibrational rates, extracting signal from noise, if you are well versed in math and science you’ll find a lot of synchronicities. Fourier analysis dovetails with the concept of unity. Pythagoras was what we might call an occultist. Newton was an alchemist (which isn…

"Newton was an alchemist (which isn’t about lead to gold, it’s about the transmutation of the Self)" Well, maybe not so much. That's kind of a 19th-20th century interpretation. We didn't want to believe that all these smart people really were into stupidity like turning lead into gold. Surely it must be much deeper than that! It must have been metaphors! But maybe not. Maybe they literally were into what they said th…

Post by deadly_syn » Thu, Oct 19, 2023, 1:36 PM UTC

hnthrowaway0315 wrote: post #3

I used to be into Occult, but never mustered the courage to learn Latin, Greek or Hebrew. I think French is also an important language. Of course there are English writers such as the beast. Just curious if anyone is into this kind of stuffs. I got into this in late teen, believing that Lovecraftian is a really thing. It quickly turned out to be made up by the great writer, but nevertheless Occult drew me in. I was n…

Post by standardly » Thu, Oct 19, 2023, 8:27 PM UTC

LNSY wrote: post #12

If anyone is interested in this stuff, Justin Sledge is an excellent youtuber who covers esoterica like this in a scholarly fashion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJkft2lUMD0

Post by hnthrowaway0315 » Fri, Oct 20, 2023, 4:13 AM UTC

kcartlidge wrote: post #16

hnthrowaway0315 wrote: post #3

I used to be into Occult, but never mustered the courage to learn Latin, Greek or Hebrew. I think French is also an important language. Of course there are English writers such as the beast. Just curious if anyone is into this kind of stuffs. I got into this in late teen, believing that Lovecraftian is a really thing. It quickly turned out to be made up by the great writer, but nevertheless Occult drew me in. I was n…

If you want the Lovecraftian mythos to be a thing, then the field of chaos magic (popularised largely by Peter J Carroll in Liber Null and Psychonaut ) is an interesting one. For traditional ritual/ceremonial magic The Heptameron is possibly the easiest of the old grimoires to read, and whilst he has his detractors Joseph Lisiewski's Ceremonial Magic & The Power of Evocation is pretty readable as a modern take. (None…