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| Engraving from Giambattista della Porta's Magia Naturalis, Nuremberg, 1680 |
If you are new to the Band, this post is an introduction and overview of the point of this blog that needs updating. Occult posts like this one - posts on the history and meaning of occult images - have their own menu page above. All posts are in the archive on the right.
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Hermetic astrology. All astrological systems trace connections between heavenly movements and earthly events. This one's hermetic because the knowledge we see is an extension of a demiurge - an intermediate creator between ultimate reality/God. Note the fake Hermetic binaries - sun/moon. silver/gold - that liars pretend are mechanisms of Creation.
Hermeticism's lie is that material observations reveal metaphysical insight. A moment's thought reveals that this is impossible by definition. But that didn't stop it from infecting the foundations of modern science.
This post is the third and last in a series looking into Hermes Trismegistus. The first introduced Hermes and Hermeticism and looked at what the Renaissance thought they were getting when Marsilio Ficino translated a Greek manuscript of Hermetic dialogues [click for the link]. The second looked at the rebirth of Hermes in the Renaissance in a new spray of symbols that kicked off the cultural inversion of the modern West [click for the link]. This post will carry Hermeticism into modern times and think about the larger relationships between the occult and truth. There are a lot of pictures here - good practice to see if you can pick up on the sense of wrongness that emanates from them.
A few things - it's Hermeticism rather than Hermes because Isaac Casaubon showed the Corpus to be a late antique forgery and not the primordial wisdom it pretended to be.
Title page to Isaac Casaubon's De rebus sacris et ecclesiasticis exercitationes... (On Sixteen Sacred Matters and Ecclesiastical Practices), England, John Bill, 1614
The 16th and 17th centuries saw history wars between Catholics and Protestants alongside the real ones. Scholars on each side were arguing that their interpretation of the past was the right one. This did little to change minds - studying material history is as metaphysically pointless as mixing chemicals. But human vanity runs by projecting self-empowering category errors, so it goes on for a long time. One thing that did come of this was better historiography - especially regarding standards of evidence. Too bad it didn't stick in modern times.
Knowledge modes can only reveal knowledge in their domains. So historical research reveals... history. And one of those historical facts is that the Corpus was a fraud.
Not everyone accepted Casuabon's conclusions at first, but time has further substantiated his observations. And no one has made any kind of serious historical argument for Hermes' existence since. But this was no problem - because there never was a real Hermes, he's just a dance of symbols. A dance that could conga on long after the demise of its eponymous fake god.
The Dance of Symbols model might be the most useful metaphor to come out of these occult posts. The satanic inversion is more important, but that also draws on the speculative posts in the regular Band for intellectual structure. The Dance of Symbols is a pattern that is widely applicable, but was noticed purely from the occult posts. The history of occult movements is always changing and intertwining - all the better to seem profound. But there's one thing they all share. There's nothing there - just cascades of the same symbols that are always changing with the times and reintroducing the same vain 'be your own god' error.
It's a three-part number.
The Life of Symbols describes how symbols carry ideas through time long after the people who used them are gone. Symbols are signs so their meaning is associative. If someone can make an association stick, the symbol will disseminate it.
The Spray of Symbols describes how different symbols - all carrying their associations - get mixed and matched. The idea seems to be that layering more cool-looking gibberish makes it less nonsensical. That's not how addition through subtraction works.
The Churn of Symbols describes a life of sprays - how the symbols and their sprays change and remix with new contexts. It's why they never go away - when the old system collapses, the symbols just churn into a new spray.
Occult symbols don't mean anything more than a generic "occultic" perspective on the world. The rejection of reality for transparent fantasies of self-deification. They're real life Postmodernism - where the only meaning is usage - discourse, not a link to reality. As long as the new context at least pays lip service to the past, occult symbols can be used how you want. It's why the Band spends so much time on the historical foundations of things - it's when they're forming that the base patterns are clearest. And being responsible about what we can know and how we can know it is what prevents our observations from devolving into intellectually worthless projected desire.
The new context for Hermes after the Renaissance was especially unfavorable. It's not just that philologically the texts were indisputably AD. It's that the whole Renaissance humanist 'older is better' theory of knowledge was being thrown out by the "learned" and replaced with Progress! Historians will classify it as moving from "Renaissance" to "Scientific Revolution" on the timeline. Devolving into pure animal materialism as advancement. There's a reason why the ironic quote marks and inverted bold red text are pulling heavy duty.
Francis Bacon, Title page for Novum organum scientiarum, Wyngaerden and Moiardum, Leiden, 1645
“Many will travel and knowledge will be increased”
Canonical picture in a canonical book of the Scientific Revolution. The Band covered this in earlier posts - the Scientific Method as originally formulated is a responsible way to get information about the material world. What it can't do is explain metaphysical things - like the question of origins or the objective basis of morality. These can only be known by faith, and faith can be consistent with observation but it can't be measured by it.
Read that again.
The Scientific Method can't explain metaphysical things - like the question of origins or the objective basis of morality.
One of the great Modern lies is to deny articles of faith.
Faith != [Christian sect]. It is a mode of knowledge.
We'll be thinking about change more in the next art post if you're really interested - in roughly a week or two. What matters here is that the 'older is better' becomes 'newer is better'. What have you done for me lately?
And since Renaissance Hermeticism got its appeal from Hermes' supposed age, this was losing credibility even without Casuabon. Pythagoras really existed and that didn't save the harmony of the spheres from being jettisoned. We mentioned in the last post that the Hermetic craze died down after this revelation and Hermetic books only reappear in the 19th century. But this isn't accurate. The Corpus as a specific title takes a hiatus, but the ideas transitioned seamlessly into other occult and esoteric forms. [note - reading back over, this may be the most important observation in the post. It was the biggest discovery for us while researching it. Keep in mind that what we think of as modern science was build on Hermetic foundations. It clarifies a lot.]
Woodcut from Johann Sternhals' Ritter-Krieg, Erfurt, 1595
Forms like "Mercurius" - the fake alchemical god based on allegories of Roman Mercury and Hermes Trismegistus. Here you see the identifying caduceus - a reference to Mercury that had additional Hermetic associations. The wisdom of serpents as a source of truth inverts the story of the Fall. And dreams of undoing God's distinctions in Creation as a path to "wisdom" is the main reason it's a satanic inversion of reality. The sun-head of this demon symbolizes the connection between Hermes and the element Mercury - Quicksilver. The most volitile of metals and symbol of the alchemical fire.
The four flames it stands on represent the four traditional elements of the alchemist. So the idea is that chemical properties - material knowledge - will reveal metaphysical truths. The false leap that Hermeticism uses to degrade and invert empirical knowledge of the physical world and our place in Creation.
Engraved frontispiece from Moses Charas Neu-erfahrne's Proben von der Viper... , Frankfurt, 1679
See how works anti-Christian inversion into what is supposedly empirical study? This is an early work on viper toxin where the line between the modern concept of chemistry and alchemy is non-existent. The motivation to research the snakes seems "scientific" but the Hermeticism is blatant. We know the caduceus was a Hermetic symbol long before "Medicine" adopted it and the sinister-looking snakes invert the moral alignment of Genesis.
This seems more significant that it appears on the service. A sign of something a lot deeper. It may even be huge.
We'll give it more prominence because it needs further reflection but we don't want the pattern to go unnoticed. Especially when other eyes may see something we missed.
Consider that the scientific method developed out of Christianity and was complementary to it. This makes sense - knowledge of God is faith-based and knowledge of God's Creation is empirical. The Creation doesn't show God's mind - that inverts the Creator/created relationship. But it does show the necessity of the Creator. Aristotle reasoned this out centuries before Jesus was born and even the institutional medieval Church saw no problem integrating his reasoning with Christian metaphysics.
Johann Conrad Barchusen, quibus subjuncta est confectura lapidis philosophici imaginibus repraesentata [preparation of the philosophers stone in images], plate 503 from Elementa chemiae, Luduni Batavorum : Apud Theodorum Haak, 1718
Barchusen was an important figure in the transition from alchemy to laboratory chemistry. In this early text he is describing alchemical subjects - like making the Philosopher's Stone - as allegories for experimental procedures. At least reproducibility rates have held steady...
Note the top right...
Here's a colored close-up of the print. The chemist is shown connecting with God through his science. But the two levels of reality are separate - we see nothing beyond the clouds and God's symbolic form. And the chemist is praying.
Empiricism for the physical, faith for the metaphysical. It's scientific.
Faith for metaphysical reality and empirical observation for the physical. Complementary forms of logos for the appropriate domain. It's perfectly coherent. Barchusen even uses an arrangement that artists uses to depict religious visions.
Alonso Cano, Saint Benedict's Vision of the Globe and the three Angels, 1658-1660, oil on canvas, Prado, Madrid
This is a good example. See the saint in prayer and the celestial vision appearing as an opening through clouds into another reality. This is knowledge through faith - there is an empirical dimension because the saint is being shown something, but the vision is miraculous and a reward for faith.
Studying chemical interactions or astronomical patterns is distinct from this.
Building knowledge of the material world through material means has nothing to do with faith and the mechanics of salvation - so long as it doesn't directly contradict a moral precept. But Christian precepts are more general guidelines than Levitical rules, so there is a huge amount of room for inquiry.
Christianity always got this relationship. The story of the Three Wise Men describes how the Magi identify that something cosmic happened from the stars, but couldn't ascertain it's nature until they went in person to confirm. Then they accepted the divinity of Jesus on faith. Observation of the natural world is valid and points towards higher things. At which point a leap of faith is necessary to cross into the metaphysical. The star didn't show them God, but it showed them where to look. The right mode for the appropriate domain.
Gentile da Fabriano, The Adoration of the Magi (detail), 1423, tempera on panel, Florence, Uffizi
International Gothic splendor from the Medici court
But what we see in the build-up to the Enlightenment is the repositioning of science in opposition to Christianity. Overt hostility that jacks the Scientific Revolution and sets it on the false path to Science! This is why we spend so much time tracing responsible connections between knowledge and ways of knowing - so we don't make bogus claims off "evidence" that doesn't apply or can't apply. It can't be repeated enough that physical, material observations are incapable by nature of providing insight into metaphysics. All they can give you are material patterns.
Time Magazine November 13 2006
It's why this sort of fake conflict is more of a confession of cognitive deficiencies of those pretending it's possible without grossly misrepresenting the participants. Experts are supposed to correct the dimness and ignorance of the populace, not distill it down to it's hollow essence and spoon-feed it back with "punchy" graphics.
But it's more than that. The conflict is fake, but so are the combatants. Neither God nor science as defined here are grounded in reality or even logical coherence. It's feeble-minded misrepresentation that lets equally feeble-minded materialists feel smart about their own enslavement to the beast system.
So where does this massive category error come from? Our default answer is human vanity - which is true in the general sense. And media is Dunning-Kruger made manifest. But historical generalities always appear in specific ways. It's why limited thinkers miss the patterns behind superficials. The bogus metaphysics and fake epistemology of Hermeticism made non-existent connections between inseparable things seem legit. So long after Hermes was banished from polite company, his legacy of confusing of faith and empiricism leads to modern inversions like churchianity and Science!
The general thought - the twist that warped science from systematic empiricism into baseless faith came from internalizing Hermetic occultism. That is, internalizing a satanic inversion predicated on dishonest claims about reality that is intrinsically hostile to Christianity in formation - to the point where it reimagines the God of Genesis as a wayward projection.
William Blake, Elohim Creating Adam, between 1795 and 1805, colour print, ink and watercolour on paper, Tate London
Like Blake's Gnostic Creation...
Frontispiece from Johann de Monte-Snyders Metamorphosis planetarum, Amsterdam 1663
Or this monstrous "God" of Hermetic balance whose creative powers are fake and arbitrary binary projections of our limited subjective awareness. The sun and moon pair is especially retarded. If you believe in Science! they're just bodies in space. If you believe in Christianity they're lights created by God. In either case, they're things in the universe.
Imagine how simple one must be to think they believe in empirical observation or Genesis and then conclude that the sun and moon transmit objective metaphysical Truth. No one worth considering can be that stupid. It looks more to the Band like functional retardation - when pride, vanity and self-worship drive hatred and rejection of God. To the point where wallowing in self-evident idiocy is preferable to reality. There is a place for these people - they'll be heading through that wide gate...
The problem - it's hard to see this corrupt root, so it's hard to verify the general thought. Modern materialist history read out "superstition" - its stories are giant versions of omitted variable fraud. So the esoteric components of early science aren't exactly front and center in the history books. The Band only realized how Hermetic it is by looking at the imagery for these posts.
Frontispiece to Johann Joachim Becker, Institutiones Chimicae prodromae: Oedipus Chimicus obscuriorum terminorum et principiorum chimicorum, mysteria aperiens et resohens, Amsterdam, Elizeus Weyerstraten, 1664.
This volume is described by a vendor as a popular alchemical handbook, which “rapidly became a standard text on elements, principles, and chemical processes”. It is the precursor to something transitional like Barchusen.
Note the alchemist at work accompanied by none other than Mercurius - the alchemical Hermes. In the background Oedipus with a cadeuceus confronts the Sphinx. And note the date. Hermeticism churns past Casuabon's inconvenient truths in the foundations of science.
Johann Joachim Becker, Institutiones Chimicae prodromae: Oedipus Chimicus obscuriorum terminorum et principiorum chimicorum, mysteria aperiens et resohens, Frankfurt, Hermannum, 1664
A version appeared in Frankfurt the same year. This one had different graphics - frontispiece and the Prague medallion with the sun-headed Mercurius crossed with Apollo.
But there's no synthesis of this stuff by any scholars to draw conclusions from or base a stronger argument on. And slugging through the relevant Latin and old typefaces around the pictures is tedious - we won't be attempting to survey the literature either. So has to remain a general thought for now.
The problem #2 - looking at the early history of science shows that the distinctions between occult, esoteric, empirical, and scientific were not as clear as they seem to us. So it's hard to separate the occultists and empiricists. It's probably not even a legitimate distinction for that time period - not by today's understanding of the words. The discourse was still forming. But in hindsight, the growth of science keeps Hermeticism alive after Casuabon and gives it a launching pad into it's own occult world after the fork from Science! in the Enlightenment.
Woodcut from Elias Ashmole's Theatrum Chemicum Britaanicum, London, 1652
Take someone like Ashmole - antiquarian, empiricist, and a Royal Society founder. His collections became the Ashmolean Museum. And also an astrologer, alchemist, and researcher of magic. This is from his own alchemical compendium - the science/mysticism distinction was way less clear.
To consider - does the inverted hostility towards Christianity implicit in Hermeticism contribute to "scientific" hostility towards Christianity after the two are amalgamated?
Magic, alchemy, astrology, Rosicrucianism, speculative Freemasonry - it's impossible to list all the churn and spray of post-Renaissance Hermeticism. Especially since many of the claims - even the plain historical ones - are false. There is no evidence of a Rosicrucian group prior to the early 1600s - all supposed earlier references to the group appear afterwards. But the fake history gets treated as real - like Hermes himself. The "Rosicrucians" that factor largely in early modern Hermeticism didn't exist. What does that say about later groups claiming descent from the Rosicrucians?
It's impossible to adjudicate all the claims. So we'll stay general. It's all just 'be your own god' ego fluffing anyhow.
So good bye Hermes, hello Hermeticism.
Looking at the pattern to this point, we see two big Hermetic surges - the late antique appearance and the Renaissance revival. The first fabricated "Hermes" out of the esoteric religious churn of Roman Egypt before Christianity. The second remixed him into a new spray of symbols - the Hermetic Christianity of Ficino before empiricism. This post will look at how it survived before joining yet another churn and spray. And after this - some observations on the occult in general.
Rainer Kalwitz, The Astronomer, 2014, acrylics + coloured pencils on illustration board
Hermeticism in any context is based on inverting natural relationships. In reality, we are part of the material universe, and the material universe a product of immaterial forces. We have to exist in the material, so we learn about it through material tools - observation and reason.
Thomas Kinkade, The Rock of Salvation detail, 2001, oil on canvas.
Our meaning and morality are immaterial, so we root those in faith. In reality, these aren't interchangeable knowledge domains - knowledge of your salvation through Jesus won't prepare a poultice for a burn, any more than knowing the geological properties of an ore can reverse the moral taint of the Fall.
Christian faith is compatible with logic, but they too are independent knowledge domains - syllogisms can't reach heaven and devotion won't solve a quadratic equation.
Hermeticism, like postmodernism - its modern, non-"supernatural" metastasis - reverses the pairing of knowledge mode and knowledge domain. This makes it sound convincing since it claims to be connecting legitimate things. It just does so in ways that aren't actually possible, so its conclusions are meaningless and can be rewritten at will.
It's like using a real barometer to measure historical influence.
The barometer is a time-tested instrument and historical influence happens.
Neither fact changes the attempt into anything other than nonsense. Which means that if you're immoral, you can claim it says whatever idiots will believe.
There are patterns in the earth and sky and our modern "sciences" of chemistry and astronomy are more rooted in alchemy and astrology than the white-coated priests let on. When the Band refers to logos on the material level or in the physical world, this is what we are referring to. The same patterns that ordered human life for most of it's existence. Survival in this world is possible because the book of nature is consistent in its general patterns.
But none of this can tell you anything about the nature of God - beyond there being order in his Creation. To use the watchmaker analogy, Hermeticism would have you believe that figuring out how the winding mechanism works in the watch means you can read the minds of the watchmaker's family. More retarded, since at least the family and watch exist in the same material reality.
So where is it coming from? Each Hermetic surge comes at a time when socio-cultural stability is collapsing, vanity is out of control, and people are making up whatever belief systems that they want. There's probably a book naming this pattern somewhere, but we can't be bothered to hunt for nomenclature for something this obvious. What we're looking at is intellectual degredation - without stable order, the most charismatic sociopath rises and the masses, craving security, will believe any reassuring incoherence.
Mask mania is an opportunity to see how a de-moralized, decentered population will embrace any debased humiliation ritual if it makes the fake fear go away.
This brings back our occult post on the mass media spell - the glamour - that replaces reality for the materialist protoplasm of the post-War West. Consider how mindless the average mental world is - flickerings of toxic big tech and big media drivel. Hermeticism flourished in the religious crises of late antiquity and pre-Reformation Europe.
The reality is that faith and observation - ideally church and science with lower-case letters - are complementary. It's a sign of our satanic materialism that we ever allowed liars to divide them. Political and religious authority - God and Caesar - may be separate, but this has nothing to do with knowledge of reality.
The Postmodern inversion is the pretense that material questions be answered on faith and metaphysical questions conform to human desire. Churchianity and Science! - perverse, upside-down mockeries of where these came from - are impossible. And the only argument for them is that they're pleasing emotionally.
Colored frontispiece to Malachias Geiger's Microcosmus hypochondriacus, Munich, 1651
The usual alchemical 'as above, so below' nonsense. There's a reference to the Trinity at the top, then the astrological map of the heavens and Hermetic alchemy on the earth. The whole thing is full of alchemical and astrological symbols that are Hermetic and not Christian.
Hermeticism gets sunk from both sides. After the Reformation, Christian Europe becomes more concerned with doctrinal purity. When one has to actively defend their faith, there is less room for luciferian mages peddling intellectually-incoherent addenda to scripture. Hermetic frauds were able to infect the roots of the new science, but this also proved temporary. Turns out that they weren't materialistic enough for the Enlightenment and were banished from responsible science as well.
So when Christianity and empiricism are even paying lip service to their defining principles, Hermeticism gets smoked out with the rest of the demonology. Note that this doesn't apply to Churchianity and Science! - they're as inverted and deceptive sprays of symbols as Hermeticism.
What this means is that the modern spray of Hermeticism doesn't have the sort of religious or scientific base as earlier examples. It moves entirely into that weird imaginary world of early modern occultism that brought us spirit writing and Lewis Carroll. And with the rise of modern materialism and retreat of the church from public life this was a big space. Just less structured and coherent than ever. It always was made up - now its totally unconstrained.
Johfra Bosschart, Unio Mystica, 1973
And this is how we get the formless nonsense of the modern occult.
Few spray symbols with the incoherence of Bosschart. We've got all the arbitrarily designated "opposites" like man and nature. The star with the Crucifixion wounds, Hermetic and Cabbalist alchemy and mysticism, astrology, Egyptian, Babylonian, Hindu, Buddhist, Norse, Taoist, and Neoplatonic symbols. All in "balance".
What you won't see is any intellectual coherence, rational structure, accounting for how we know - just stuff a guy spews for a few bucks or some clicks.
The last post mentioned a rough divide between Northern and Italian Renaissance Hermeticism with the North being more practical and alchemical. That post looked at the more speculative and theological Italian version mainly, but the practical side is where Hermetic ideas crossed into science. All three main strands of Renaissance Hermeticism - astrology, alchemy, and theurgy or magic - are major parts of the Renaissance occult. Polymaths like Paracelsus and Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim (1486-1535) weren't Hermetic in the sense that their thought revolved around the Corpus. But the Hermetic ideas we traced in the last two posts were huge parts of their sprays of symbols.
Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim, De occulta philosophia libri tres, Johann Soter, 1533
Here's the page from Agrippa's Three Books of Occult Philosophy where he starts recording what he claims is celestial speech or the language of angels. The idea is that this can compel them to aid or even serve you.
One thing all this occult bile has in common is the false promise of power or mastery of reality.
It's the same pattern we saw with Ficino in Italy - the Renaissance humanist types are making their own sprays of symbols out of the same historical sources. So they all seem similar - because they are - but no two are identical. Later frauds can play mix and match with these ones as well as their sources. Agrippa's Three Books of Mediocre Fan Fiction are still considered important source material today. At least by publisher's flacks. But the word 'source' is revealing - you're pulling pieces to make your own nonsense spray, not following a program.
It's why Kabbalah or "cabala" turns up in this Hermetic alchemical gibberish as well.
Joseph ben Abraham Gikatilla, Portae lucis, 1516
Kabbalah was a form of Jewish mysticism that emerged in medieval Europe. Like all these branches of secret knowledge, it has unclear and disputed origins. The basic premise is similar to Christian exegetics - there are meanings beneath the surface of the Bible that need specialized methods to decode. Kabbalah refers to the methods.
What happened in the Renaissance is that the humanists churned ideas from Kabbalah into their growing mass of unity of all religions idiocy. This Renaissance-era Kabbalist is shown with the Sephirot diagram showing the 10 emanations of God - a lot of numerology in Kabbalah too. There are different configurations of the Sephirot - that's part of Kabbalistic interpretation.
Friedhelm Wessel, Tree of life with the ten Sephiroth and the 22 Hebrew characters as they are presented in the Sefer Yetzirah (Book of Formation) - the oldest known work of Jewish esotericism.
There are different formations of Sephiroth - this is slightly different from Gikatilla's up above. The sheer number of potential combinations - the tem emanations and the 22 connecting characters can keep occultists churning for lifetimes. This one is the most common configuration - if you search the term or look for templates, it's the one you usually get. It's also the one that will creep into the Western varients.
Like many occult sources, the content of the Sefer Yetzirah is said to date back to Abrahamic times, but the actual historical origins are unknown.
The comparison between the Sephiroth and the Tree of Life is one of the "connections" that will let humanist and Hermetic occultists churn versions of Kabbalah into their growing unity of all religions spray. According to Jewish lore, the secrets of Kabbalah extended back to the Garden of Eden - a perfect fit with the older is better approach to occult knowledge. So it could join Hermes, Enoch, Zoroaster, and all the other riculous fabulists that proved to be catnip to ostensibly smart people.
This is where we get the variants - in belief and spelling - like Christian Cabala, Hermetic Qabalah, and whatever turns up at the New Age shop. Here's a pair of variations from some late Renaissance-style sprayers. Fludd was a major English occultist. Kircher's is the most common variant of the Tree used in Hermetic Qabalah and includes the Law of Moses and commandments of Maimonides. This is a reminder that these frauds didn't know any more about Judaism than they did Egyptology - their methodology was literally 'it's old and says something metaphysical so churn it it!"
Robert Fludd, Kabbalistic tree of life, representation of the ten Sephiroth and the 22 paths connecting them, 1621, engraving by Johann Theodor de Bry; Athanasius Kircher, The Tree of Life, 1652, engraving from his Œdipus Ægyptiacus
Looking back, it's amazing how credulous these fakes were. Forget about responsible critical methodologies - there isn't even rudimentary logic tying Renaissance occultism together. Just the most childlike appeals to the most preposterous authorities taken on faith. Their languages and erudition made them much more capable than today's SJWs, but the caliber of their thought is equally low. Think about that for a moment. It's literally 'this old book is old. It must be true!'. It would be like noting that we are made of chemicals and our food is made of chemicals, so everything in the lab storeroom is good to eat. It's actually that stupid.
Pico della Mirandola, first page of his Oration on the Dignity of Man with notes
Like this luminary of Renaissance unity of all religions idiocy...
There's a reason no one studies Renaissance philosophy for more than it's history. We've been told ad infinitum that this was a landmark in the history of human development. But their entire system of knowledge formation - their epistemology - is an empty gamma pose. How could no one ask Ficino or Pico de gallo about basic rational consistency? The image of media apparatchiks assiduously avoiding asking questions about Q comes to mind. Were Renaissance "thinkers" dupes? Beast puppets? Malevolent disinformation agents? We're told average IQs were higher in the past. Where were the smart people?
It's as if fabulists who make things up to inflate their own vanity are unreliable....
Anyhow, these idiots spammed out whatever fairy tales they could find and milked rich patrons with claims of primal knowledge and mastery of reality until the wheels fell off. And even that only lasted until another fraud could remix the same debased starting materials into a new crap sandwich. When looking at post-Renaissance occultism, it isn't the specific shades of meaning between the different components - they are used pretty much interchangeably and point at the same vague "do what thou wilt' vanity. What matters is that any of those symbols are there at all. Any combination will show the same underlying rejection of reality and the moral order of logos.
It's like the connection between mental deficiency and bumper sticker fetishes. It doesn't matter which particular combination of lies and psy-ops they pledge allegiance to - the existence of any combination indicates the nature of their handicap.
Frontispiece from Athanasius Kircher's Ars Magna lucis et umbrae, 1646
Imbecilic bumper stickers are a good analogy. Name dropping Hermes, splattering Zodiac figures, showing the macrocosm with geometry, stirring in numerology, Sephirot, and symbols - these are markers. There is no substance behind them - if there was, they'd have to be used consistently.
Supposedly a study of optics, the Hermetic symbolism with it's anti-Christian metaphysical relations should be clear. The Sephirot is more subtle - compare the arrangement of these elements of knowledge to Kircher's Hermetic Tree of Life above.
See why we call it a spray and churn?
So flimflam men like Agrippa weave Hermetic ideas into the Western occult where they churn and spray into the present. John Dee is a frequently-cited English link and a major pillar in Aleister Crowley's version of Hermetic occultism.
Engraved title from John Dee's Monas hieroglyphica, Antwerp, 1564.
Fiddle Dee Dee had his own brand of symbolic spray - his background was in mathematics and he was partial to numerology. He may be most famous for his "Enochian Magic" - an attempt to control angelic intelligences with a variation on the celestial speech of Agrippa and the scrying of a seer.
Dee died in obscurity when James I restored Christianity to the English court following the blasphemous era of the Tudors.
It's this alchemical, astrological, magical presence that lets Hermeticism outlive it's eponymous founder. In fact, right around the same time Hermes went poof, the Rosicrucians appeared on the scene. Much like Hermes, the group was very influential and didn't really exist. At least not how they were professed to be. Three anonymous texts in the early 1600s claimed to reveal a hidden society of enlightened beings who used their esoteric knowledge for good. And that esoteric knowledge? Another spray of Hermetic alchemy, astrology, cabala, and occult power over reality.
The first of these texts was the Fama Fraternitatis Rose Crucis [Report of the Rosicrucian Brotherhood] of 1615. This announced an ominous "Universal Reformation of the Whole World, with a Report of the Worshipful Order of the Rosicrucian Brotherhood, addressed to all the Learned Men and Nobility of Europe". Then came Christian Rosencreutz and his chemical marriage. His epithet wasn't as real as Hermes and closer in time! But it should have been.
Johann Valentin Andreä, Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosencreutz Anno 1459, Strasbourg: Zetzner, 1616.
The most substantial of the "Rosicrucian" texts - the "chemical wedding" is the basic unification of opposites at the base of inverted Hermetic fake metaphysics. Christian Rosencreutz was the imaginary magus who supposedly founded this learned circle in the middle of the 15th century. The problem is that there are no mentions of him or his group anywhere before the early 17th-century texts. Afterwards, all sorts of frauds pile on and claim "Rosicrucian" connections for older figures like Fiddle Dee Dee, but their relationship to reality is historical fan fiction.
The Rosicrucians were no more real than the Kings and Queens of Narnia. The difference is that once Andreä made them up, esoteric simpletons started pretending that they were.
The Rosicrucians resemble Hermes in that the non-existence of the historical entity doesn't impact the appeal of the fake beliefs
Consider - we believe the truth because it's true. Good news and hard truths both just are - our reactions reflect reality. Lies have no truth to legitimate them. People may be deceived into belief, but those pushing them are inverting. Putting what they want - their reactions - over what is. And people who choose to believe things that are obviously false - like material observation yielding metaphysical details - are also placing their desire over reality. To master reality. And being master of reality includes mastery of you.
This occult crap is all projected will in silly graphic form. Look past the stupidity and it's literally psychopathic. Counterpoint - it does come with dopamine.
Theophilus Schweighardt, Emblematic Image of a Rosicrucian College from Speculum sophicum Rhodo-stauroticum, 1618
Famous engraving associated with the "Invisible College of the Rosy Cross". The Rosicrucians supposedly moved secretly and invisibly through the nations, doing good works undetected. Once you're familiar with the gamma personality pattern, this stuff is too funny.
The engraving is supposed to be allegorical, but a giant fake cart in a spray of hollow symbols is perfect literally as well.
The argument is that Andreä - himself an alchemical occultist - hoped his fake society would inspire the learned to start up real ones.
This is the "Rosicrucian Enlightenment" of famous old historian Francis Yates - the Rosicrucian-inspired formation of groups dedicated to the advancement of knowledge. This is different from the Renaissance humanist circles that had done similar things because of the emphasis on empirical "scientific" learning. Modern history tends to overemphasize the empiricism because they see it as Progress! towards Science! But these "enlightenment" filtered empirical knowledge through the inverted Hermetic metaphysics of its alchemical and astrological roots.
Basil Valentine, Azoth, Ou Le Moyen de Fraire l’Or Cache des Philosophes, 1659
Basil Valentine (Basilius Valentinus) is another fake who supposedly lived in the 15th century but is unmentioned until the 17th.
It's basic Paracelsian Hermetic alchemy with natural harmony symbolized by a Tree of Life with elemental leaves. Insofar as Basil is laying out pharmaceutical preparations, the book is empirical enough. But note the fake metaphysics of balance. The opposing triangles symbolize the satanic inversion at the gangrenous heart of Hermeticism - the as above, so below from the Emerald Tablets.
To a Christian or an honest empiricist, heaven and earth are radically different, and the sun and moon aren't fundamentally opposite creative principles.
What they are are pure projected vanity. That heaven - God, ultimate reality, whatever - is knowable and controllable from our insignificant subjective mortal finite vantage point. And that the key to God's nature as creator is fully manifest in objects our narrow range of vision can see. Actually think about that for a moment. It re-imagines God in man's image. Click for a post on vanity.
Rosicrucianism uses cross symbolism that lends itself to confusion with Christianity. There's even an alchemical interpretation of Jesus as coming together of "opposites" God and man.
Rosicrucian diagram redrawn from an engraving in Theophilus Schweighardt's Pandora sextae aetatis, 1617 and painted by Adam McLean, 2001
The Christian cross is not a symbol of the alchemical synthesis of opposites symbolized by sun and moon.
Rose Cross order sounds like something that's dedicated to the Passion of Christ, But there is nothing compatible with a Christian world view. What happens is that Christian symbols are churned into the spray occult spray. Unity of all religions.
Bonus points to anyone who can show in a logically coherent way how God and man are "opposite" and not "radically different" - as they are empirically and definitionally. Words have meanings and you don't have to be Noah Webster to puzzle out that difference !=opposite. Opposites have to represent extremes within a coherent frame of reference. God is all encompassing and has no "opposite". To pretend otherwise - to see him as a dude in a beard occupying a place and time - is projection. Mischaracterizing Him in man's image, then using that mischaracterization to build false binaries. Infinite and finite are linguistically opposite, but in reality, all finite quantities are likewise subsets of the infinite. How does this conform to any definition of opposite on an absolute, abstract, metaphysical level? This isn't looking good...
The point?
Which is perfectly legitimate - our very existence in the world is a frame of reference. But they're human, material-level constructs. They navigate the material world and tell us about physical existences. Now try and wrap your mind around the caliber of mind that could believe our frames of reference determine the essence of divinity and Creation. There is nothing in our visual impressions or arbitrary oppositions that has any metaphysical relevance at all. They can't. We try and accommodate metaphysics through our imperfect systems. But the material world is a divine impulse. And the gateway out is a narrow one.
Even more bonus points if you can show how a subset can be ontologically opposite a superset.
Engraved title page from John Swan's Speculum Mundi, Cambridge, 1644
Another early Science! book. The Mirror of the World. More like the mirror of the self-idolater. A misrepresentation of God between fake binary poles - sun and moon, alchemical male and female, etc. The path to God is through cabalistic and alchemical symbols that undo the distinctions of Creation. Now either a) read Genesis or b) look at reality. Are the sun and moon binary poles that determine the nature of material reality? No? What about "opposites"?
These Hermetic freaks are too stupid and mendacious to use basic terms correctly.
Tinted engraving from Johannes de Maldini's Mirabilia Mundi, 1754
Look at the date - this continues for a long time. This is a Hermetic-Rosicrucian chain of being - the fake God splits into a fake binary that's mirrored alchemically in the four elements.
It's the sun/moon pairing that is so retarded to either a Christian or an empiricist. Empirically, they're part of the heavens. They have unique visible properties, but so do other things in the sky. To a Christian, they're tertiary creations on one side of a preceding division. Light and darkness are divided first, and then the sun and moon both belong on the light side. One greater, one lesser. Gradients, not opposites. The even can appear in the sky at the same time.
Does our lived experience of the world fall into a diurnal-nocturnal binary? Obviously. But it's on the liar to show how this indicative of metaphysical truths like Creation and salvation.
It's best to think of the original appearance of the Rosicrucians as a cross between a public hoax at a time of considerable religious conflict and the imaginary learned society in Bacon's New Atlantis. Bacon - the founder of the Scientific Method - also was interested in esoteric knowledge, but made it clear that his Bensalem was a thought experiment. Like More's Utopia. One Masonic historian argues convincingly that the real origin and impact of Rosicrucian thought wasn't the imaginary Christian Rosencreutz or Johann Andreä. It was the influence that the example had on the real alchemists and other mystics that formed societies in the Rosicrucian image. By 1622, the society of Alchemists in The Hague were calling themselves Rosicrucians and even claiming Rosencreutz as their founder.
Frontispiece from C.F. Sabor's Practica naturae vera, 1721
Here's a pretty good representation of a pre-Enlightenment alchemical lab. Note the date - over a century after Andreä and scientific discovery is still being paired with the sun/moon idiocy. Think about this - what we consider the forerunner of science is presenting it's intellectual authority as stemming from nonsensical and morally inverted occultist drivel.
The overt anti-Christianity of Enlightenment and later Science! does seem to make more sense. But what does it matter if the knowledge is strictly empirical one might ask. It isn't.
The fake metaphysics don't go far.
This next emblem first appeared in 1625, and was reprinted in 1678 and 1749. The four corners show the four elements - the foundation of this image is alchemical. And what does alchemical knowledge give us? The cave in these drawings indicates the worldly realm and the hilltop the spiritual or metaphysical. In the cave we have Apollo and the planetary deities - the astrological knowledge that is accessible to our material senses. Up above, we see the same triangular symbols of above and below - as above, so below - and the Hermetic unity of their opposites in the six-pointed star. It all unfolds between the fake poles of sun and moon.
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| Emblem from the Lucas Jennis' Musaeum Hermeticum, Frankfurt, 1625, reprinted 1678 and 1749. |
We aren't just making it up when we claim Hermeticists are too stupid to distinguish sense data and metaphysics or different and opposite. They're shouting it from the rooftops, figuratively speaking. Looking more closely, what they are doing is making circumstantial observations - chemicals react - and extrapolating them to abstract determinant principles. It's the inversion pattern we call secular transcendence - the delusion that finite minds can grasp eternal abstract absolutes. Put it another way. Why does dissolving metal in acid mean we must believe adopt self-evidently fake Hermetic metaphysics? It's like thinking making dinner proves the existence of the Hindu cosmic egg.
It appears that this Rosicrucianism was the pathway for Hermeticism to infect another old friend - Freemasonry [click for part 1 and part 2 of a post on Masonic imagery]. It will come as a surprise to no one that the specifics of the link between them are contested and unclear, but even Masonic historians accept it. The Band figured that if the order itself acknowledges the connection, there must be something to it.
Engraving from I.C. H., Das Hermes Trimegists, Leipsig, 1782
It's pretty much all here. The alchemical symbolism, the gendered binary of creation, the as above, so below six pointed star, the Rosicrucian rose, and the serpent/dragon eating its tail as an occult symbol of eternity. The same eternity Christianity and science tells us doesn't exist in the material world.
Oh, and the crossed compass and square that's the most common symbol of Masonry.
This is where the spray and churn makes things confusing. Freemasonry is a complex group with a convoluted and uncertain history. The supposed Biblical origins are clearly part of what we've seen is a pattern - where occult nonsense is given even more nonsensical ancient "sources". Hermes, Enoch, Kaballah, Zoroaster - it's becoming a long list. We saw in the Masonic posts that Hiram Abiff - the legendary founder - supposedly lived in Solomon's time, but the wisdom on the two columns goes back to before the Flood.
From Darkness to Light, Masonic poster by Hazen (New York, 1908) with symbols based on 19th century sources.
You can see the two columns in this image that we've looked at a few times. Enlightenment through merging opposites is pure Hermetic alchemy. Right down to
This picture is a spray of symbols. The post it first appeared in is where the spray of symbols concept debuted. Here it's showing us the Hermetic overlay on a Craft Masonry core.
Masonic chart, 1846, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, DC
Here they are again. The Masonic path to a distinctly Hermetic enlightenment. The columns where Hermes' wisdom was recorded, Sophia as demiurge, fake balance of opposites.
We saw in the Masonic posts that the geometer's tools were also used by architects and builders, since medieval building was applied geometry. Gothic vaults don't stand for centuries if you get the geometry wrong. And just like people today using the metaphor of a computer programmer for God, medievals thought of him as a master builder. The compass had well-established metaphysical symbolism. Masonry as an organization just formalized it.
Dieu Pantocrator, from the Bible moralisée of Toledo or Bible of St Louis f.1 v, 1220-1240,
illumination on parchment, Toledo Cathedral
Familiar symbolism from the art posts. The rainbow shows God outside time and the cruciform halo that He is also Jesus - the Logos - in Creation. Of course the Logos holds compasses - symbols of geometric order and harmony. A perfect way to visualize divine Logos expressing itself as abstract logic and natural order in human terms.
Note the absence of "binaries", fake claims about sun and moon, or the pretense that this is somehow "the same" as the material world.
In reality, Freemasonry probably emerged from medieval mason's guilds, with the metaphysical elements coming from the ancient link between building, basic geometry, and God. This is Craft Masonry, and is the history most modern Masons - who use the order like a Lion's Club-type service organization - think they're part of. Rosicrucianism had taken hold in England in the early 17th century, and it appears that it was these Rosicrucians that added the Hermetic sludge during the 18th-century Masonic revival.
Both were secretive groups claiming higher knolwedge, but the source material differed. Freemasonry was architectural and geometric - the source of its secrets encoded in Solomon's Temple. The Rosicrucians were theosophists - claiming metaphysical knowledge from Hermeticism and cabala. The theory is that the Rosicrucian brought Hermetic elements into the occult or Speculative Masonry that sprang up in the middle of 18th century Britain. Then it gets murky.
Woodcut from 'Cabala chemica' in Volume VI of Theatrum chemicum, Hamburg, 1659.
This is from well before the early 18th-century establishment of modern Freemasonry. Another spray of symbols, with a creator holding compass and square in a Hermetic alchemical universe.
Note that the "creator" is subordinate to the sun. This isn't God - this is a Hermetic demiurge. No cruciform halo, no Logos, no path to salvation.
It's the High or Philosophical Degrees of Speculative Masonry where the Hermetic principles and language is most pronounced. Apparently older Craft masonry cared little about "levels" above master or secret society trappings like initiation rituals. As one of these combo Rosicrucian-Masons put it in 1723 - the higher degrees and mystical knowledge are generally concealed from the Craft. Hence the lack of prior evidence for them. "Brother Engenius Philalethes" is worth quoting - for the content as well as the smug gamma tone of his rhetoric. All quotes from this link.
Picture this creep without the backing of amenable authorities. It's a blunt way to put it, but he was crying out for an ass beating. The occult-gamma connection is another big observation.
18th century engraving based on work of Basil Valentine
The symbolism is Masonic and Rosicrucian. The Masons' cubic Stone conflated with a symbolic Rosicrucian stone as a foundation of a Hermetic universe.
Masonicalchemical image from Die Theoretischen Brüder oder zweite Stufe der Rosenkreutzer, 1785
So grab that torch, be your own God, and get out there and heal the world! The gamma drips like a suppuration. Now it's "Masonicalchemical" - a spray of compass and square, sun and moon, hybrid stone, the as above, so below star, etc.
Note on the six-pointed star. Most recognize it as a Star of David. In the Middle Ages it was sometimes called the Star or Seal of Solomon, and was considered a powerful charm or amulet. The Hermetic one is like the Rosicrucian cross - it makes you think of a religious symbol but inverts the meaning. This one is the superimposition of the two triangles - that earth and heaven are "opposites" that are the same.
Engraving from Malachias Geiger Microcosmus hypochondriacus, Munich, 1651
Older, pre-Freemasonic depiction of mysteries hidden from the unworthy. Mainly to show the star and triangles at the top.
That's enough of him.
The historian describes it as the language of a Rosicrucian adept addressed to other adepts. The tone certainly implies two audiences - the Operative or Craft Masons who aren't privileged to look behind the Hermetic
Again, it's murky, but it appears is that Speculative Masonry with its High Degrees was a 18th-century fabrication by Rosicrucian brothers that grafted Hermetic metaphysics onto old Operative symbols like the compass. There was no cross and rose in Craft Masonry. Conversely, the Invisible House or Temple of the Rosicrucians was a philosophical ideal and not a reference to Solomon's Temple of Jerusalem. Hermeticism really looks like an inversion package floating through history and infecting and inverting thought systems. Neoplatonism, Christianity, Humanism, Science, Masonry - there's a pattern.
J. Augustus Knapp Rosicrucian Symbol, circa 1895
The pelican feeding her young with her own blood was an old Christian symbol for the redemptive sacrifice of Jesus. Add that to a cross and the compass of the Pantokrator and you have something that could pass as Christian. But the impression of wrongness is palpable. It's the Rosicrucian-Masonic Hermetic hybrid. None of the signs mean what you think they do.
It's why most individual Masons are fine, but the metaphysics are directly opposed to Christianity.
Moving into the Victorian age, Hermeticism flowers again with the supernatural craze that tried vainly to fill the spiritual void in a materialistic and de-moralized society. The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn - founded around 1887 by three Freemasons - was the most influential of these occult orders [Summary from the New World Encyclopedia and Infogalactic].
The modern version is not directly descended from the Victorian original, but follows the precepts. The symbols too - the familiar Egyptian paintings, Sephirot, and triangle cross that almost looks Christian.
The founders were also members of the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia (S.R.I.A.) - a Rosicrucian offshoot of Freemasonry. There were also connections to the Theosophical Society - another group of mystical occultists.
The Golden Dawn - with it's disgruntled spin-off Aleister Crowley - set the direction for 20th-century Hermeticism. Wicca, Thelema, and all kinds of fake New Age "spiritualities" draw on it's example. And the spray of symbols was at a peak - the articles cite Christian mysticism, Kaballah, Hermeticism, Ancient Egyptian myth, Theurgy, Freemasonry, Alchemy, Theosophy, Eliphas Levi, Papus, Enochian magic, and Renaissance grimoires. We'd throw some Neoplatonism and Pythagorean numerology in there as well. You can see why we aren't going to bother sorting through it all. And why we spend so much time on the roots - once you see what the spray means, you don't bother getting lost in the mindless details.
There were three orders of the Order. The program is tiresomely familiar.
First Order - Hermetic Qabalah, alchemy, astrology, tarot divination, and geomancy
Second "Inner" Order (Ruby Rose and Cross of Gold) - magic like scrying, astral travel, alchemy
Third Order (Secret Chiefs) direct lower two orders by spirit communication
Secret Chiefs...
Legendary a-hole Crowley split with the Golden Dawn to found his own Hermetic spray of self-serving nonsense.
We do owe him for popularizing "do what thou wilt" - it's been excellent shorthand for the 'be your own god' satanic inversion at the root of occultism and postmodernism alike. So he does stand as an archetype of bullshit. Appropriate for a legendary a-hole.
Hermetic publications rechurn the old sprays. Like the Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception of 1909. Or the much more influential Kybalion of 1912. This second one sounds like a much older book, and it claimed to be the essence of the original Hermetic teachings. It isn't - it's more of a New Thought shade of be your own god - but it had a big impact on the contemporary occult. It's filled with retarded binarisms pretending our material groupings are metaphysically determinative.
Even Hermeticists don't like the Kybalion.
Here's an epic loser whining about it - pretty much the equivalent of getting ripped by sci-fi fandom for being too creepy.
But having quickly read the Kybalion at the attached link, it is trash.
This is the occult context for our as above so below Tarot magician. The items on his table are the Tarot suits, but were also used in Hermetic rituals. Lots of roses and a symbol of infinity - the eternal knowledge this occult lore gives.
Pamela Coleman Smith, The Magician tarot card from the Rider-Waite-Smith tarot deck, 1909
This famous deck was designed by occulists Arthur Edward Rider and Pamela Colman Smith. The Magician is a Hermetic alchemist, with his Emerald Tablet knowledge of correspondences allowing him to reach beyond the infinite cycle of the material world. The items on the table - the cup, pentacle, sword, and wand - are the four suits of a tarot deck.
And that brings us to the present day and the various sprays of symbols associated with Hermes and the occult. It's as if there's an acceptance that there's nothing there but projected wish fulfillment so make up what you want and it will all mean the same thing. Like mentally ill people's bumper stickers.
Evdokia Fidelskaya and Grigoriy Kabachnyi, Hermes Trismegistus, Cultural Museum Grev Kafi
By modern times, distinctions that we traced like the philosophical-religious and technical texts no longer apply. The seven planetary deities and four elements of astronomy and astrology, the as above so below Emerald Tablet, and a caduceus are all that's needed for a self-deifying rejection of Logos.
The Jesus-like facial iconography and expression is like the Rosicrucian cross or six-pointed star. A visual symbol intended to suggest the inverse of what it is.
So no, Creation isn't determined by fake binaries, and pretending material differences either don't exist or reveal metaphysical truths doesn't make either lie true. Not empirically, logically, or metaphysically. As we pointed out in a previous post, the unity of all religions jackassery is used by the satanic to guide the retarded.
It's amusing that the "secret knowledge of Hermeticism actually revolves around this binary - evil or stupid? The answer - usually both. It's one pairing that it does manage to combine. And there is even binary symmetry...
So what do we make of this? Why is the spray of symbols so enduring? What is are the lessons of Hermeticism, beyond stay away from it?
Because of the spray, the same symbols keep turning up in different places. These are tells that will let you to identify satanic liars of different surface stripes. The first impossible premises are related - that we can see metaphysical truths in material things and that arbitrary binaries we set define divine creative principles or reveal the fundamental nature of Creation. It's easy to see the appeal.
Binary polarities are the limit of many people's abstract reasoning skills. For them - "sun and moon! Like man and woman..." is as profound as Aristotle glimpsing universal causality or John being shown the revelation on Patmos.
Because we have bilateral symmetry and exist in a world that seems organized around poles or extremes, it's easy to assume the multi-dimensional infinites of Creation conform to the same.
But it's more than just grifters exploiting myopia - a lot of very smart people missed the obvious when it came to the different forms of Hermeticism. It's a really common false binary to see the world as pulled between God and Satan. It's true that we are pulled between Logos and damnation, but the world is Fallen and God's plan preset. This makes Satan is a unique figure - both a being and an archetype... and we just left the 'reality is binary' crowd behind. We'll set out some crayons.
So there's Satanism as worshiping the being, and then there is the satanic pattern - call it luciferian, gnostic, Hermetic, Promethean, whatever - of being your own God. The better to rule in Hell than serve in Heaven brand of self-immolation. Tolkien's metaphor for being cut off from higher reality was the bent world vs. the straight road. A graphic way of showing the difference between the world as an end in itself and the true path of Logos. This painting works too...
Dave Martsolf, The Cathedral, 2008
The world is finite, entropic, and degrades over time to ruin. Like human lives expanded to a geological time scale. Impose all the will, make all the claims, accrue all the power you want - usurping mastery of reality is another luciferian tell. But there's a more general issue.
That's the matter of secrecy. The primary meaning of occult is secret, and one thing this every version of this Hermetic slime shares is the idea of secret knowledge. And not just any secrets - the claim that the world you think you see is false and only the peddler of the secret knows the truth. This is one of the occult formations that carries over into Postmodernism through Marxist lies about "false consciousness" and all the offshoot lies about "systemic" b.s. The Band assumes it's a material inversion of real spiritual awakening, but that's just speculating.
Karen Haydock, Individuality is false consciousness
Mental deficient depicts monstrous fused heads with a caption that directly lies about the nature of human existence in the world. A picture of a person would make her mendacious idiocy too obvious.
Contrast this with empiricism - your best measure of the world around you is your own direct observation. Or to Christianity, where the Bible spells out a world view that expands what we can see, but doesn't contradict it. That may be the biggest revelation of the entire Band - the consistency of the Christian metaphysics of the West. We see as through a glass darkly, but the shadowy forms do map onto higher truths that are not visible in themselves. Scriptural interpretation may introduce allegorical meanings, but they won't contradict the literal one.
The reality is anyone pushing occult secrets is likely a sociopath, almost certainly a perv, and definitely a liar. Otherwise, someone somewhere would have been Hermetically enlightened. Like this
Engraving from Baro Urbigerus' Besondere chymische Schrifften, 1705
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