Astrology and the Hermetic Mind

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Hermetic Tradition: From Egypt to America, From Osiris to Benjamin Franklin
Presentation 14 of 24

Astrology and Hermetic Mind
Presented by Roger Weir
Tuesday, April 8, 1986

Transcript:

...that we hear of it will be over 700 years. So, the Hermetic tradition goes underground becomes esoteric for 700 years. But of course, during all that time as far as anyone knew it was never going to surface again. It was never going to be public again.

So, when its surfaced again and became public it was the most extraordinary circumstance in world history. There never had been a time in any civilization like the early Renaissance in Italy. And of course, the catastrophic event that precipitated all of this. That made it come back public again. That brought the esoteric stages out of the underbrush and made them come public again was the fact that the Byzantine Empire fell. And in the classical world when the vandals came in and sacked Rome. Alaric sacked Rome in 410 A.D. and after that Rome was never again anything. It was a huge sprawling confab rather like Orange County, but it was never a city again. It was never, never a power.

And all of the power, all of the imperium, all of the learning went to Byzantium. Constantinople. And the Byzantine Empire just continued as if the West had just become a bad poor relative. And never hear from them again. Pay no attention to them.

But a series of setbacks and shocks hit the Byzantine Empire. Early in the 1200's a motley band of Christian Crusaders on their way to fight the Saracens in the Holy Land, stopped off for a leave of absence in Constantinople and got out of hand and sacked the city. Destroyed a lot of the fortifications. Killed a lot of the defenders. Stole a tremendous amount of booty. And it crippled the Byzantine Empire. What was left of it then hung on for a couple of centuries because it was powerful. It was entrenched. But it was crippled. It was hamstrung. It could never again take the active offense.

And so, by the early 1400's, by 1420's-1430's it was evident to everybody that the show was over. That it was a question of time. In fact, they held on until 1453 when Mehmed the Conqueror simply for one year shelled the great walls of Constantinople. And after a year of shelling them they were rubble.

Constantinople had three sense of walls that were the one of the engineering wonders of the ancient world. And they were impregnable. But they were impregnable two battering rams. But they're not impregnable two kind of artillery that was around finally by the 1450's .and it took a year to shell them. And enough breaches were made that there was no defending the city and it, and it fell.

But generation before it fell the savants of the Byzantine Empire realized that this was going to happen. That it was inevitable. So, they made overtures to the West for an ecumenical religious council. And in 1439 all of the branches of Christianity, the Roman Church, the Greek Orthodox, the Coptics. All of the branches of Christianity met together in Northern Italy. At first it was in the city of Ferrara. And then Cosmo de Medici, who was the uprising genius at the time, said this is the best show in the world and we're going to have...it's like the Olympics. We're gonna have it in my city in Florence. And so, they moved it to Florence.

And the Great Council of religions in 1439-1440 in Florence was the, was the, was the, the high-tech Expo of its time. And it single evently ended, not only the Middle Ages but ended the esoteric tradition underground. And of course, the, the archetypal magas of the time, Pletho realized that the northern Italians were bright. they were not particularly under the thumb of ecclesiastical authorities or superstitions. And so, he took it upon himself to talk openly. And all of the great esoteric traditions began to come up to the surface in the 1440's in Florence.

And by 1463 the entire Hermetic corpus was translated by Ficino under the aegis of a Cosmo de Medici. He was the patron. And from 1463 it was all of these esoteric documents and doctrines that had not been seen publicly by anyone for 700 years. Had not been seen publicly for a thousand years by most people. Suddenly were available. And not only in print, so to speak, but everybody was talking about them. So, that Florence in the 1460's and 1470's was an unbelievable place. It was all of a sudden like heyday downtown Alexandria in the 3rd century A.D. And the same issues came up and what nobody expected was that the same archetypal response came up too.

And as Uncle Carl says, "What we have to watch out about archetypal levels of the human psyche, is that they have us. We don't have them." It's not a mood that you have that you can change. It's not an emotion which you can learn to deal with. It's not a thought which you can educate. It's not even a subconscious compulsoriness which you have to learn to modify. You can't educate. You can't modify. You can't do any of these things with archetypal energy. You have to ride it out.

So, the time-honored wisdom about these things' is don't provoke them. don't pull the tail of the dragon. It's a no-win situation. and if you're dumb enough to do that then you have to ride it out. Then you have to know how to how to deal with this kind of energy. And unfortunately, in our time in the 20th century we have not learned. And we have pulled the tails the dragon. And he is awake. That's why we're having courses like this. Because we have to know that we're in pretty skitzy kind of situation.

Pletho. Here's one of Pletho's prayers from the 1440's which he read publicly in Florence.
King Apollo, you who rule and govern all things in their identity. You who unify all beings. You who harmonized this vast universe, so varied and manifold. Oh, son lord of the heaven. Look favorably upon us. and you too moon, venerable Goddess look favorably upon us. And you bringer of light, Venus. and you still bond Mercury. Both faithful companions of the resplendent sun. and you fineon, furious and fighthon. Saturn, Jupiter and Mars, who all obey the Sun, your king. Who helped him as is fit in the government of human matters. We celebrate you as our radiant protectors. Along with the other stars which a divine providence has thrown into space.

Pletho believed that the old, Olympian, astrological Hermetic religion was coming back. And when he was asked whether Roman Catholicism or Greek Orthodox faith was going to prevail at the Council of Religions, he said neither. He said the original religion of God will prevail. And by that he meant the Hermetic tradition. But in Florence in the 1440's and 1450's and 1460's he wasn't laughed at. He wasn't scoffed at. The Italian hotshots said oh we didn't know there was another game in town. Hermes Trismegistus? And it took a while for the documents to be translated.

One of the peculiarities in the way that Renaissance Hermeticism comes up. We have to now consider at its origins because there's no way to understand the flaw that developed by just going to the Renaissance. And of course, the flaw that came in in the Renaissance is here today in our society. Our whole culture. Our minds are made up out of it. Because it's an archetypal level and the flaw came in with that kind of energy. And we have been had. We've been had royally. And we do not know that. so, the only way to deal with it is to go back and try to recap a little bit of how astrology comes into Hermeticism. The Hermetic tradition.

One of the peculiarities that we will note. And I'm going to quote here from a great Italian Hermetic scholar Eugenio Garin. In his recent book Astrology and the Renaissance published about two years ago. He writes, "Pletho was at the same time both a great thinker and a great reformer. His interpretation of Platonism and Hellenism found its conclusion in a rationalism which exploited the scientific possibilities implicit in astrology to the full. His Zeus, his all one, his heavens, his destiny,"

And he uses the Greek term Heimarmene. Remember now Heimarmene is the, the seven spheres that the planets have. It's destiny. How those seven spheres move. Their influence is destiny. They're the planets. The Sun, the moon and the five planets. This is one of the core key structures in astrology. But also, in the notion of destiny. And also, in the understanding, Hermetically and incidentally also Gnostically, of the limitations upon human freedom. These limitations were absorbed into the notion of the supreme identity, Zeus or God; however, one would understand, but this is a this is a peculiarity to have this done.

Now we're going to go back to the beginnings. We have to go back to the basement. this is a very famous book. One that Madame Blavatsky used. And it's by A.H. Sayce, who was a very famous archeologist and writer. And this is Astronomy and Astrology of the Babylonians. And these are the first translations of the cuneiform tablets. Done about 1874. It was the first time that anybody was able to read these cuneiform tablets. And a lot of the documents relating to astrology were collected and brought together by Sayce here.

The Chaldeans of the seven planets among which the Sun and the moon were always reckoned. This has been the work of several scholars and the planets were called by the ancient Acadians, the seven liubot or debots. A word which is translated by the, it stands between the word for wolf and the word for goat. And signified an animal that has brilliant eyes. so, it's a vital nature with brilliant eyes. Primal. And it's the character of these celestial beings. Jupiter the brightest and reddest of the planets is especially called liubot. And the order in which the planets are arranged is always the same. The moon comes first. Then the Sun. Then Mercury. Then Venus. And Saturn Jupiter and Mars is last. Mars is always last.

Now it's interesting because in the early Babylonian arrangement of the planets, in the astrological arrangement, there's no understanding at all of the relative distances. And the reason for this. And I'm going to come to Franz Cumont Astrology Among the Greeks and Romans. Cumont shows us that the Chaldeans, as a matter of fact, we're observers of the heavens. But that it was not until the equinox of 72, the vernal equinox March 21st of 721 B.C., that there is a predicted celestial event. It was an eclipse. And it was the first time that there was any understanding that the calculating of repeating patterns could be accurate. Before that there is no record anywhere. And there are just thousands and thousands of sightings. And of course, you know that the, the Royal prerogative was always to establish a link with heaven and so forth. So, there's just a mass of sightings and information but it's all on a unique event level. 721 B.C. is the first time that there is a realization that there is a periodic reoccurrence of something.

So, from 721 B.C. until about 523 B.C., for about two hundred years, there's a, a tremendous attempt by the Babylonians, by the Chaldeans, to find out what other correlations there are. And in order to make a record of correlations they had to establish what is called a celestial chronology. And so, all of the sightings that had been had. All of the observations for a long time, a thousand years, 2,000 years, were correlated during this time period. And by 523 B.C. it was apparent to them that they were able finally to predict a lot of events, celestial events. And so, astrology gains for the first time around the 520's B.C.'s gains some kind of traction and credibility. In terms of the patterns revealing themselves.

About this time, about 520 B.C., is when the Persian power comes in and takes over the Chaldeans. Takes over the Babylonians. So that just about the time that astrology begins to be born in terms of predictability of patterns. In terms of a dependable chronology. The Babylonian religion is overlaid by a Persian synthesis. that is extremely important. Not only do the Persians come in and take over Chaldea and Babylonia, but they also bring in out of Israel the Jewish populations into the Babylonian captivity. So, this is a very strange confluence of events in the 520's B.C. astrology begins to be born about the time that the Jews are brought from Israel into captivity into Babylonia. All this under Persian synthesis. That is a tremendous psychic implosion, if I can use that term.

So that the, the Jewish population. remember now that there are two eras of captivity. There were two kingdoms. there wasn't just one Israel. In fact, Israel was the northern part of the Holy Land. And Judah was the Southern Kingdom. and the Northern Kingdom was captured in the 520's. And the, the southern kingdom Judah was about a century later. the Jews who went in the second captivity kept their religion. And they became the, the root source of the unchanging Jewish insistence that every iota be kept the same forever. The Jewish stubbornness of keeping Judaism pure came from the second captivity. But the first captivity Jews became ecumenical, in the sense that they learned to deal with the pastiche of power and religions. And in that pastiche astrology was the new science. It was the only predictable celestial coordinate available at that time.

So that within the Jewish tradition itself ever after that time, there are two strands that braid sometimes and some sometimes go apart. One of them could be called Orthodox Judaism. And an Orthodox Jew in 400 B.C. would be as recognizable as an Orthodox Jew today. Very little difference. But for the Jew who was used to a kind of an international, ecumenical, intellectual outlook they have always been willing to review, to change, to advance, to develop their outlook. it is from this second group of Jews, from the first group of the captivity that such a development as the Zohar comes. And it is also from that group that astrology becomes the International element in the Hellenistic mix of peoples.

Because two centuries later when the Greeks to take over the Persian Empire under Alexander, it happened so fast. You have to understand that it was like a it was like the Incheon landing of MacArthur. In the slow glacial movement of empires Alexander, the Great was like a lightning bolt. He was into Asia, conquered everything to India and came back and died within a very short time span. Somewhere around 10 to 12, 15 years. Which in terms of centuries of slow movement was like instantly.

So that the Greeks, the Greek mind, the Greek Hellenistic Empire that was set up swallowed the Persian Empire. And swallowed this pill of an ecumenical, religious interpenetration pastiche with astrology as the basic core integrating factor. And wherever these populations of people collected astrology developed. And Alexandria of course. Which had a population, a Jewish population, somewhat about the same size as Los Angeles about a half a million people. But a population that was like the Los Angeles Jewish population extremely intelligent. Extremely refined people. Cultural. For whom the ties to the traditional religion were not quite so strong as the ties to the intellectual understanding of how to put all of this together in some kind of a system. And astrology of course becomes one of the very powerful aspects to putting this together.

Cumont writes, "One of the peculiar aspects of astrology in Chaldea. In fact, one of the peculiar aspects of science in Chaldea was that it was always," he uses the term sersadoa. Do you know what that is? It means it belonged to the priests. So that astrology, in fact all science in Babylonia and in Chaldea, belonged to a priesthood. Whereas in Greek thought science and astrology belong to the laity. It was sacred but it was sacred in the public hands. So that there is a conflict of religion, religious interests. The priests on the one hand and the laity on the other. The Greek mind being rather secular and scientific in its understanding. And the Chaldean Jewish mind, Persian mind, being are all for a priest craft.

Now in our period in the Hermetic tradition that we're looking at, in the 2nd and 3rd centuries A.D. there was a tremendous tussle between these groups. There were temples between all kinds of populations but also between these groups. The priesthood group wanted to keep control of the information for themselves. The source, the ground horizon, for the interpretations, for the predictions was access to the observations. The astronomical observations. The Greek mind wanted to keep them public whereas the sersadoa mind wanted to make them private. And the sersadoa mind won in the 3rd century A.D.

So that the scientific mind of the ancient world was cut off about 200 A.D. science comes to a ceiling of development about 200 A.D. in the Greco-Roman world. There is no advance on science in the Greco-Roman world until the time of Roger Bacon. About a thousand years later is the first time that there's any real advance. Which gives you some idea of the tremendous greatness of Roger Bacon. When we get to him, you'll be able to see the universal genius he was.

Instead all of that energy that was going into scientific development. And most of the scientific development was in Alexandria. And most of the Alexandrian scientific development in the 1st and 2nd centuries B.C. on and on through the 1st and 2nd centuries A.D. was in mathematics. Greek mathematics in those three centuries was just rising almost to a level where they would have, they would have had the kind of mathematics that we had in the Renaissance by the late 3rd century, early 4th century A.D. But the development was stopped because there was no access to observations. And the big science of the day was astronomy or astrology as it, as it was called.

So that we find that there is a tremendous skew that's going to come into the Hermetic tradition. Most of the Hermetic documents that we have deal with the period before the truncation of the mind. And as soon as this truncation comes into effect, we don't have any more Hermetic documents. Nobody writes this way anymore. It's not that they write differently it's that nobody writes this way anymore. For a thousand years. And it's something that we have to look at. And, and understand.

So, when we come to the Hermetic documents now, eleven and twelve A Discourse of the Mind to Hermes we're dealing with the last time that we will hear anybody talk intelligently about the mind, openly about the mind for a thousand years. Nobody will add to this until the Renaissance.

Hermes begins, he says
I will not shrink from speaking as the thought comes to me. Many men have told me many and diverse things concerning the universe and God and yet I have not learned the truth. I ask you therefore master to make this matter clear to me. You and you alone I shall believe if you will show me the truth about it.
Now what's peculiar here is that usually it's Tat asking Hermes. And Hermes would be the teacher. Who is Hermes talking to? Who is teaching Hermes? Well the other actor in here, the other voice is mind. Mind.

And mind says, "Hearken then my son and I will tell you how things are as to God in the universe." So that the dialogue, the Hermetic dialogue number eleven and also number twelve, is actually an interior dialogue. It's not a dialogue speaking to somebody outside. But it's Hermes having a dialogue with himself. With his own mind. It's an interior dialogue. It's like a yoga, a platonic yoga going on inside. But being written out so that we can follow this going on. What the implication is here is that the person who reads this dialogue. And generally, you wouldn't have read it silently, but you would have heard it. The person who hears this dialogue is now Tat, the son of Hermes.

And the esoteric teaching is on a sophisticated level. Where it's no longer the teacher teaching you. But you being able to see how the teacher teaches himself. Understand that this is like the, this is the, the last level of sophistication of learning. To be able to look in...let's use an example, to be able to listen in on Einstein thinking thoughts in his own mind. So that you learn by the experience of participation how to think on this highest purist level. And it also undercuts the kind of teaching that normally would have happened as teacher per student. Now we're going to the mind directly.

So, mind then says to Hermes, "Look upon things through me. And contemplate the cosmos as it lies before your eyes." Now notice here there's no talk here of the zodiac. There's no talk of the deckhands. there's no talk of the planets. There's talk first of all of the cosmos as a unity. As the full pattern. And that the mind is able to purify itself to the point where Hermes can look through the mind at the cosmos. This is already extraordinary state of affairs.

"Then when he can look at the cosmos, he can see it as the most ancient of all things yet in its prime and ever new. See too," Now here's the next stage, "One can see the cosmos as the ancient one days still fresh and everlasting." This everlastingness incidentally is something that came up generally around the 2nd century A.D. Before that eternity was not so much of a designation. I know that we come across eternity in the Pyramid Texts from time to time in translation. but the, the, the better word to abuse than those translations would have been everlastingness.

The notion of eternity of having always been and thus having no, no real origin, no original point, is something that comes out in the 2nd century A.D. In fact, it's a, it's a condition that subscribed to the Roman Emperors. They are described no longer as Invictus alone. Conqueror. Conqueror of all. Sol Invictus. But they're described as eternity. Eternity as in in Latin means for foreverness. That they are there without, without beginning and without end. World without end. So, the cosmos is like this.

Once Hermes is able to see through the mind the cosmos in this form, eternal, then he sees "The seven subject worlds marshaled and everlasting order. And filling up the measure of everlasting time as they run their diverse courses." Now notice here that the planetary seven spheres, the hebdomad, the Heimarmene is not eternal but is everlasting. That is, it has a made point. It is created. It is a created order. Which lasts forever but which is not eternal. It was a very fine point but a very, very important point.

So, here is the workings of the Sun. and there is the moon who out strips all the other planets in their course. The instrument by which birth and growth are wrought. The worker of change in matter here below. Look at the earth, firm seated at the center the foundation of this goodly universe. The feeder and nurse of all terrestrial creatures. See too how great is the multitude of living beings. Now all these have been made.

Now they have talked about the seven planets. They've talked about the moon, the Sun, Venus, mercury, Jupiter, Saturn and Mars. That's seven. But they've also talked about the earth. But the earth is not included in the seven planetary orders. The earth is not included in the astrological order. It is a very significant thing. But the earth is the center. "It is the center and the foundation of this goodly universe."

So that the ability to attain to the self-awareness of the earth as the center of the universe changes the seven planetary order to an eight order. Because the earth becomes the eighth. So that one frees one's self from the celestial destiny by, by being able to return in consciousness to an awareness that the earth is the foundation of the universe.

An extremely important, extremely important. How important is this? It's important enough because our basic understanding of the kingdom to come is all based upon this archetypal of projection. That there will be a heaven on earth. That there will be a New Jerusalem. That there will be a millennium. That Christ will return to earth again. that there will be a resurrection. All of these are images. I don't like to talk this way because I know that this is religious for most of us. but I have to stand in this way. All of these are images of the same archetypal configuration. And the archetypal configuration founds itself upon the earth being the eighth. The transformative eighth. That man is freed from the celestial destiny if he can attain to consciousness of the earth in its position as the foundation of the universe. It was very, very, very important archetypally.

I can't, I can't tell you in strong enough language. The whole sanity of Western man depends upon him believing that this is so. now you, you can understand what a devastating blow it was for someone like Galileo to say that everything moves including the earth. Or like somebody like Copernicus even a couple hundred years before Galileo, when he said that the Sun moved. Because it meant then that the Sun was at the center and that meant then that the earth moved also. The whole archetypal understanding of what was sanity was disrupted if one believe that that was so. Because one would never be able to escape from the destiny, the order, the impingement of Heimarmene upon human life, if the earth moved and was a part of this destiny. It meant then that the hebdomad, the seven levels, was not the only thing that was like a ironclad destiny upon man. But the earth was a part of it that the oggdoad also was a destiny. Even more permanent than ever because there was nothing else in the universe then to be outside of that.

In other words, a, a an epidemic of archetypal psychic claustrophobia began to hit Western man. In the early 17th century with Galileo. It didn't hit him with Copernicus because they hushed him up. But in the 17th century that's what happened. And that's why all of the, all of the history of Western man in the 17th century sort of cracked. It didn't fall apart yet, but it cracked. But also gave emphasis then to the esoteric traditions. Because the esoteric traditions understood that there was outside of the eighth, a ninth. That there was a ninth level of silence. Where the angelic orders sang in silence and praise of the divinity.

And so, the confidence, the courage of the spirit of the esoteric orders was always secure. There was never any problem whatsoever. They welcomed Copernicus. They welcomed Galileo. because there was no problem whatsoever. Because whole archetypal sanity was not founded upon a hubris that the earth was an unmoving center. All of this, all of this fits in.

I'm going to read just a short quotation from ER Dodds' nice little book Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety. Chapter two Man in the Demonic World. He has a quotation that starts this chapter by the 20th century British poet W.H. Auden. And the quotation is "We are lived by powers we pretend to understand." The perfect statement of what happens when archetypal energy is loose in a human being. "We are lived by powers we pretend we understand"

If you want a good essay on it, Carl Jung's essay on Wootton. When he had the dream of Europe being drowned in an ocean of blood. And he went in and started analyzing his own dreams. And was analyzing the dreams of his patients. And he realized that almost everybody that he talked to in that time period was having transpersonal imagery that was just blotting out all of the personal things. The personal problems that people had were dwarfed by the imagery that was coming in that was transpersonal. And so, he wrote the essay Wootton because he said the European mind is being gripped by an archetype. And of course, that it turned out to be the fascist state in Germany, in Italy, in japan.

What's interesting and with what has not been pointed out sufficiently before is that when an archetypal energy comes up it comes up in mankind. Even though it was provoked by a European situation it also came up in the Japanese mind. No one has faced that issue yet. It's a devastating implication. What is devastating about it? It means that when the archetypal energy that's being provoked now in the Chinese mind comes into play it will affect us too and we will have no understanding of what is hitting us. That's coming up.

So here....

END OF SIDE ONE

Early Christians centuries. In other words, the progressive withdrawal of divinity from the material world and the corresponding devaluation of ordinary human experience. In the next two I shall describe some extraordinary experiences which the record has survived from the second and third centuries. For the present chapter then I take as my text the passage in the suppositum where Plato defines the demonic. Everything that is demonic, says Diatoma to Socrates, is intermediate between God and mortal. Interpreting and conveying the wishes have men to Gods, the will of God's to men. It stands between the two and fills the gap. God has no contact with man only through the demonic is there intercourse and conversation between men and Gods. Whether in waking or dreaming.

Now where does that put Hermes? That makes Hermes the king of the demonic realm. In that understanding.

Notice the watershed. The watershed is that the 2nd and 3rd centuries A.D. are completely different from the 1st century A.D. And the 1st century B.C. so there's a break there. There's a break around 100 A.D. And there is a break.

I mentioned it twice before and I'll just mention it again. I think that the exact break came when the gospel Saint John was taken to Alexandria about 95 A.D. From everything that I can tell it was like somebody pointing a laser beam of insight that illuminated the Hermetic archetype that had risen up in Alexandria. And the scintillation of, of that meeting was, was like a beam of pure insight being introduced to this dual like matrix of the Hermetic archetype. The evidence is, is colossal that this is what happened. One has all the indications possible.

But what Dodd says here is that human life is devalued. But I say that this is not so. I say that the valuation went from the external to something interior. That people stopped being concerned with what was out there because they realized that what's in here is of more concern. But one has to go one step further than that. And this is where it becomes esoteric. What usually we think is inside is the mind. But the fact is there was a devaluation of the mind also at this time. The retreat inside did not go to the mind. Because the mind was rejected just like the exterior was rejected. The exterior was a Roman-Greek synthesis. And the interior the mind was a Greek-Hellenistic synthesis. But where the attention of human beings went was to what we call the soul. The soul.

And what is the soul? The soul is the vehicle of self-identity which is able to leave the body and leave the mind. It's the vehicle of transcendence. It's very, very important to understand this. Hermes is the guide of souls. Where does he guide the souls? He guides the souls through the demonic realm, between the human and God. All that terrain is demonic. Good or bad it's still all demonic. One needs a guide, good or bad. The, the good demonic was focused in Apollo and the bad demonic focused in Dionysius. or you could turn that around say Dionysius was good for you and Apollo was bad for you. However, it was.

The Hermetic archetype was the messenger able to go was the only element of consciousness. The only element in that whole archetypally seigure.... seizure that was able to be free. That was mobile to communicate. And so, if the attempt ...your attention went not to your body and not to your mind but to your soul then Hermes is the guide of souls was the number one concern of you.

So, that Hermes becomes increasingly the, the guide towards salvation of souls. But in order for one to firmly place oneself in one's soul one had to make a differentiation. And the differentiation was between the soul and the mind. Because they were both interior. So that you couldn't have a simple duality exterior interior. That wouldn't work. It wouldn't be sufficient. You couldn't have a duality of body and mind, subject and object. It wasn't enough. Because the interior had to be further differentiated between mind and soul. And this was the famous differentiation between psychic and pneumatic. That the soul was spiritual and that the mind was psychic. that the mind was subject to the planets. To the destiny. To the Heimarmene. Was subject to astrology. The astrological order. But that the spirit was capable of being freed from that order. The spirit was capable of salvation.

So that one needed to tend to the fact and make sure that one's identity, oneself was positioned in the soul and not left in the mind. And the only way to tell that one had put one's identity in the soul rather than the mind, Hermetically, was to go through progressively all of the orders in the demonic realm and free oneself step by step by step by step. That was the old Hermetic tradition. How did you know you were free? Because you stepped on every step on the stairs and you went out through the top. Now that took a lot of patience. It took like analysis with, with a Jungian that might take ten or fifteen or twenty years.

You can see when the realization of what was at stake and how much work do is going to be that the Hermetic tradition didn't appeal to the popular people. But the problem was still there. The Hermetic assessment was still there. The archetypal pressure was still there. What was the solution? The solution was that there was a Hermetic master who has done this in a way that all you have to do is believe in him. And it will be like a shortcut. a jet stream through. That person is Jesus. Because he has not only gone through those stages because he is eternal. He is at every one of those stages throughout eternity. And if you believe in him, he will be your Hermetic guide instantly permanently through all these stages. But the requirement is, is that you have your identity firmly in your soul. Because if you have anything of your identity left in your body or your mind then destiny is going to have that.

Later on, in medieval imagery and iconography this turns out that when you die the, the soul leaves the body and flies upward on wings to get to the heaven. And all the little burned-out cinder demons try and grab the nice little butterfly soul going up. That was the kind of medieval imagery. But the understanding was very much like that in the third century. It's just that they didn't use that kind of medieval childish imagery. There it was a deadly serious concern.

So that by the by the 3rd century the concern of any religiously awakened human being was, is my, am I safe in my soul. whatever I have to do. whatever kind of life I have to live. whatever thoughts I have to have to firmly put me in my soul and keep me there, that's what I'm gonna do. Don't give a damn about how many drachmas I have. Or how many slaves. Or what I have to do. if the Lions are chewing on me and I'm in my soul I am safe. The Lord is my shepherd. he is no longer a poimandries, he's no longer Shepherd of the mind. But he's a shepherd of men to take them instantly to the Father. take them out of the destiny.

But in all of this. and this is what's important. In all of this there's a confusion. There's a confusion. And the confusion comes because there's this bifurcation that astrology brings in and that the Orthodox Jewish tradition brings in. And it centers around whether the earth is a safe place ever. Because in one tradition the earth is a safe place. It will be the kingdom of God will be here. But in the other tradition, equally strong and equally ancient, is it's going to be out there and not here because this is a part of the problem.

So, you have a split in what is called the eschatological archetypal expectations of the Western mind. That is there from the beginning. And it's a sophisticated watershed that doesn't even become apparent until one gets into the arcane Hermetic theology. What Ficino in the Renaissance will call the, The Prisca Theologia, The Pristine Theology. Why is it pristine? Because when you understand the pristine theology you look back throughout any ages, back into ancient Egypt and you can see everything lining up. you can see that you have the same understanding that they had as far back as you want to go. This is something you just came to, but you can see all along the line who came to that. It's like looking down the corner and you see all the open doors. And you see five thousand years of history. That all the sages have come to the same understanding. This is why it's certain. Because you can in a metanoia and your spirit turn around and look, look forward you can see that through foresight that it will always be that way. That the truth will always be true. regardless of whatever conditionality there is. That's certainly. So, the problem now in our Hermetic tradition, in the 3rd century, is that all of these concerns are coming together massively all at once. There was almost no, there was no timing of them at all. All of these concerns came at the very same time. All at once.

The master in the Hermetic tradition in the 3rd century who brought all of this into a practical a whole was Plotinus. And when we get to Plotinus and we're going to get to in pretty soon. What Plotinus is concerned with is how to teach you to get into your soul so that you can have your identity 100% in your soul. And have communion with the divine. Because that is the only thing to do. That everything else is just a preparatory towards getting to that. And then it's not something to be understood but something to be experienced.

And in Plotinus' famous phrase, "The flight of the alone to the alone". It is unfortunate because we think of alone in terms of lonely. But what Plotinus means, in his very sophisticated Alexandrian Hermetic Greek, is the solitary integrity of the human person safe in their particular soul. alone in that sense. Because that's the only vehicle that can be shepherded through the demonic of destiny realms back to the Father. Back to the divine. Back to the eternal. The flight of the alone to the alone. So, we'll see.

We're running out of time; we'll have to come back to this. But I think I think you're beginning to get some indication all is not right with the mind of man. That the reason that we have problems today on the scale that we have is not because the world is bad. And it's not just simply because a bunch of people have been making little mistakes. Or because people have trouble getting along. It is a monumental psychological log jam on a transpersonal level that there is no way to adjust to. We're sick to death. Unto death as Kierkegaard said. And the only cure there is, is to find the real. It is the only cure. We don't have any choice anymore. At all. There are no nice stories to tell us. There's just this particular challenge. And the response has to be forthcoming.

We'll get back to the dialogues on the mind next week. And we'll go all the way through them then. And, and we'll see. I've got a lot of books here incidentally that you can look at. Here's Philosophy of Science and the Occult published by the State University Press of New York. Here's a statement by 186 leading scientists objecting to astrology. And when you read the document you can see that some of the concerns that are here are archetypal. It isn't just scientists trying to debunk astrology as a science. There is an archetypal message that's in here. Why, why would they do this at all? You see.

Well thanks for your patience.

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