Hermeticism is a funny thing. It’s the main wisdom tradition of the West that isn’t Christianity. It’s where we get science from, and large parts of English literature.
But it’s probably best understood as Western magic.
It’s the origin of alchemy, and astrology, and the Law of Attraction, and Wicca. Of grimoires and spells and wizards who wear pointed hats and write sigils and speak arcane languages to command hidden forces.
But it’s also where the scientific revolution comes from. Isaac Newton was a practicing alchemist, as just one example of many. You can actually see his Hermetic thinking in his formulation of physics once you know what to look for.
Hermeticism is a very deep and complex topic. And it often drowns in fantasy. Since the 18th century there’s been a sharp divide between its rational and mythical sides. An example is how astronomy offers no guidance about how to live a good life, while astrology falls prey to confirmation bias and rationalization.
Fortunately, I think there’s a way to bridge this divide without having to go into a ton of detail. The core of sane Hermeticism is pretty simple. It just requires a perspective shift.
This video was the first of seven I offered publicly on “Pareto Hermeticism”. “Pareto” here refers to the Pareto Principle, also known as the 80/20 rule: “80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.” Basically, if you know what to focus on, you can do most stuff you care about with just a few of the tools.
This first video gives an overview, mostly focusing on the idea of reality as a fractal mirror. This idea helps make it clear why alchemy and astrology are part of a unified system for cultivating wisdom and magical power.
This was originally livestreamed on Facebook in August 2023. (You can view the original here if you like.) Unfortunately Facebook changed the aspect ratio of the video a few seconds in, so it looks kind of strange. Thankfully it doesn’t break anything about the presentation, and the rest of the series didn’t suffer this fate.
Further resources
Here’s further info on some of the things I brought up during the call, in case you’re curious:
The Wikipedia pages on Gnosticism and the demiurge give pretty good overviews of those topics. Bear in mind that Gnosticism tends to demonize the flesh as a prison and encourage spiritual transcendence, which is seen as a confusion in Hermeticism. (In the Hollow Tree of the Qabalah this error is known as Satariel, the Empty Power that rejects the divine gift of Saturn.)
I point out an ancient distinction between theurgy and thaumaturgy. The first is about becoming magic (inducing sacred experiences) while the second is about doing magic (affecting the material world). Much later on a distinction was drawn between “white magic” and “black magic”, roughly corresponding to these two. (You see this in the belief that praying to God is fine and good but casting spells is maybe demonic.) When the West dethroned religion during its Age of Reason, it flipped which of the two kinds of magic was demonized: now prayer was seen as foolish whereas penetrating the secrets of the material world was all that mattered. Today we are still heirs of this confusion, as science versus spirituality. (The fact that science is seen as more authoritative or real comes from what the Hermetic Qabalah names as Ghagiel, the rejection of the divine gift of the stars.)
I referred to “mathema” as the discipline of using numbers & shapes to train gnosis. The term comes from the mathematikoi (literally “learned ones”), one of the two main groups to arise from the cult of Pythagoras after his death. This is where we ultimately get our word “mathematics” from. The strange rote tool taught in modern math classes is only superficially similar to mathema though; I wrote a Twitter thread in March 2023 ranting about this fact.
Finally, if my style of teaching Hermeticism appeals to you and/or you want to see the rest of the Pareto Hermeticism series, consider subscribing:
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