Welcome to the Hall of Hermes!

A brief intro to my posts on Western magic

The Hall of Hermes is my space for sharing about Hermeticism — the main origin of both Western magic and science — tempered with what I call “gnosis”.

Mostly I’m offering this for fun. I think it’s enriching to understand one of the West’s greatest sources of culture. And I find it satisfying to clean up fuzzy thinking around the topic.

(Yes, science and magic are compatible — but not the way magically-inclined folk often think they are. It’s nothing “quantum” or supernatural. It’s perfectly mundane. It just turns out that the mundane is absolutely wondrous and far more surprising than science has yet noticed.)

I did an overview of Hermeticism as a Facebook livestream series. Each part of that series is here for replay; I recommend starting with them:

• 1. Overview
  A big-picture view of (my way of describing) Hermeticism: seeing reality as a fractal mirror, and therefore studying “above” (astrology) and “below” (alchemy) in order to see how to embody divinity and transcend live & death (theurgy).

• 2. Astrology
  There are layers (“veils” or “koshas”) shaping consciousness. If everything is a fractal mirror, we should see those veils reflected in the sky. Seen this way, astrology can be a metaphoric art that orients us to our own experience.

• 3. Alchemy
  There are laws governing how you can change the fractal. You learn those laws by entangling yourself with parts of it. Since you are (part of) the fractal, this process is key for transforming yourself.

• Interlude: The Law of Subtle Causation
  Magic is the art of working with causes that aren’t widely recognized. This makes those causes subtle. When people miss a subtle cause, they’re stuck working with the effects and can’t really change anything. So a key aspect of learning effective magic is becoming familiar with uncommon causes.

• 4. Qabalah
  Modern Hermeticism uses a kind of map, called the Tree of Life, to synthesize the whole system. I think it was a really helpful addition. It points out crossroads to different states of consciousness and illustrates the goals and methods of Hermetic work.

• Appendix 1: The Hollow Tree
  The main nodes (“Spheres” or “Sephiroth”) of the Qabalistic Tree of Life have “hollow” versions (“Qliphoth”). These are something like the toxic mimics of divine power. They name several key spiritual error modes that I think are worth being aware of.

• Appendix 2: Tarot
  Tarot isn’t actually a core Hermetic topic, but it became popular after the Renaissance and is now heavily integrated. As a result, there are ways to use it as a tool for reading the fractal mirror and for enacting magical change (“thaumaturgy”).

In later posts I give more practical guidance. For instance, I think there’s a way to combine astrology & astronomy as a basis for reading the sky; I explain that method in more depth in this post:

As I flesh out more, I may come back to this intro and update it for ease of reference.

In the meantime, if this approach to Hermeticism interests you, I encourage you to subscribe. You’ll get email notifications when new posts go live, including my more general writing outside of Western magic.

I reserve a few things for paying subscribers. The ability to comment and also some posts in the archives. But mainly it’s a show of support for what I’m doing here.

Welcome!