Tag Archives: gnosis

Practical Gnosis – Hermeticism

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We realize from our study of and, more importantly, our encounter with the figure of Hermes Trismegistus that the most difficult task we have as moderns who wish to pursue a spiritual path is that we cannot simply learn new information and fit it into our pre-existing World View, but we must learn a new World View, a new framework in which to fit the Hermetic knowledge. We are handicapped at every turn by the preconceptions we share of Reality, which are part of the Modern World View. The emphasis on the historical truth of Hermeticism, rather than its spiritual truth is but one trap. The attraction to endlessly “study” the area without actually engaging with the material or practicing the Hermetic arts is another. We do not follow this path because we wish to write a thesis or out of idle or abstract interest. Hermeticism is a means to an end and that end is union with the Divine.

So what is the method? Our first step is to learn and actually practice one or more of the Hermetic arts of astrology, magic and alchemy. At the same time we should study and meditate on the Hermetic philosophy that underlies these arts. We must constantly oscillate between theory and practice.

Practice without theory leaves us blindly following our sources and our limited experience. Practice alone also tempts us to focus on the results of our work, often material, leading us astray with the prospect of wealth, influence and power from our ultimate goal.

Theory without practice is essentially an endless series of mental games. By actually working with the Hermetic arts and obtaining results we can assure ourselves of the efficacy and correspondence to Reality of these arts and the philosophy that underlies them.

 

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In choosing to follow the traditional methods of practicing astrology, magic and alchemy, that is those methods used before 1700, we can do our best to avoid the simplifications typical of “New Age” spirituality and the distortions induced by the Modern World View. We do not accept the traditional Hermetic teachings merely because they are ancient, but because they are true.

As interesting and useful as it is to predict the future with astrology, to summon spirits with magic and to create the philosopher’s stone with alchemy, we find the true value in these arts is the transmutation that their successful mastery causes in our World View. This is not to say that these are purely psychological changes. No, astrology, magic and alchemy most assuredly do work and do causes changes of both a material and spiritual nature. Rather, by observing these changes and recognizing our ability to cause these results, we can know, by experience and for ourselves, that materialism and atheism are false and that the title of agnostic, literally one without knowledge, i.e. the ignorant, is properly bestowed on most moderns.

After having learned this knowledge intellectually, a slow process of assimilation takes place and we begin to internalize and to embody this knowledge. If astrology, magic and alchemy work, it can only be because the Cosmos is indeed one great unified Being bound together by myriad chains of spiritual sympathy and interconnection. Once we truly know this, once we have actually experienced the reality of this, then we have truly begun the process of Hermetic gnosis.

Source:  Sacred Texts

Gnostic Truths Behind Secret Societies and the Alchemical Mysteries, by William Cooper

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GNOSTICISM was at the Foundation of the ancient alchemical mysteries propaged by the Secret College.

This presenter then invites us to refer to this old movie as illustrative of his point … Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kn76zoYjr4k

 

THE ALCHEMICAL MEME AND SECRET SOCIETIES

(Excerpted from the book, The Mysteries of the Great Cross of Hendaye Alchemy and the End of Time, ch. 2, by Jay Wiedner [Destiny Books, 2003].)

At the heart of the alchemical mystery lies a secret.  This is no ordinary secret, however, for it is that which cannot be told.  the experience of gnosis.  Ultimately, this inexplicable knowing cannot be conferred or taught in any ordinary manner, only incubated and gestated through a mysterious process known as initiation.  This initiation can come in a number of different ways, usually through someone who already knows, but occasionally it occurs by means of sacred texts and direct insight.

The alchemical gnosis has been transmitted from generation to generation, through thousands of years.  We find the same content experiences of gnosis from the modern samyana experiments at Maharishi University to the Ancient Egyptians. (1)  We find the same content in spontaneous experiences from mystics of all eras.  The secret at the core of alchemy is an ineffable experience of real workings of our local cosmological neighborhood.

So how can one incubate and gestate such an experience?  The answer may lie in the word transmitted.  Modern sociologists have begun to discuss the concept of memes, or complex idea groups — such as monotheism and democracy — that appear to have the ability to replicate themselves.  Memes seem to have other properties as well, such as an unusual psychic component.  The spread of Spiritualism in the nineteenth century is a superb example of a viral-like meme outbreak, and traces of Spiritualism’s meme can be found surviving into the New Age nineties, with its dolphin channeling and near-death experiences.  Hollywood films such as The Sixth Sense are deeply influenced by Spiritualism’s perspective on the afterlife, conveying the meme directly and powerfully to millions of moviegoers.

It helps to think of the secret at the core of alchemy as a very special and sophisticated variety of meme. Like a spore or a seed, the meme has a protective shell that is also attractive to appropriate hosts. In the case of the alchemy meme, that shell is the seductive allure of the transmutation of base metal into gold.  Even if one absorbs the outer shell of the alchemy meme, however, there is no guarantee that the inner core will blossom and the meme become active.  For that to happen, a series of shocks or initiations is required.

The sophistication of the alchemy meme is such that the experience of gnosis at its core can be stimulated only by these shocks.  Therefore, to transmit the idea of complex of the gnosis meme through time requires a series of encounters between those in whom the meme is active and those who have merely been exposed to it.  From this need evolved the idea of priesthoods and then, as religious structures degenerated, mystery schools and secret societies.  We can think of these as incubation devices for spiritual memes.

Through the millennia, the undigested seed of the alchemy meme was jumbled together with other spiritual memes, creating a seemingly endless series of hybrid spiritual expressions masquerading as alchemy.  From its appearance in first-century Alexandria to its modern expressions, however, the secret at the core of the alchemy meme can be traced by its gnostic ineffableness.  The secret protects itself, but in doing so leaves an unmistakable fingerprint.  By following these gnostic fingerprints, we can track the progress of the alchemy meme through history.

EGYPT:   ISIS AND HORUS

The word alchemy, as a name for the substance of the mystery, is both revealing and concealing of the true, initiatory nature of the work.  Al-khem, Arabic for “the black”, refers to the darkness of the unconsciousness, the most prima of all materia, and to the “Black Land” of Egypt.  Thus, the name reveals the starting point of the process and the place where this science attained its fullest expression.  This revelation, however, important as it is, effectively conceals the nature of the transmutation at the heart of the great work.

For three thousand years or more Egypt was the heart of the world.  Much of the knowledge that is the underpinning of Western civilization had its origins in Egypt.  The lenses of Greek and Judeo-Christian “history” distort our modern, essentially European, view of the ancient world.  The Bible gives us an Egypt of powerful pharoahs and pagan magicians, mighty armies, slaves and invasions of chariots out of the south.  Herodotus gives us a travelogue, complete with inventive stories from his guides.  To the Hebrews of the Old Testament, Egypt was the evil of the world from which God had saved them.  To the Greeks, it was an ancient culture to be pillaged for ideas and information.  To understand the origin of alchemy, we must let go of the Hebraic and Greek bias and look clearly at what the remains of the ancient Egyptian culture can tell us.

When we do this, two things immediately jump out at us.  First, the ancient Egyptians were the most scientifically advanced culture on the planet up to the present day, if we have indeed caught up with them; and second — their science, in fact, their entire culture — seems to have been revealed rather than developed.  The Egyptians claimed that their knowledge was derived from the actions of divine forces in what they called the First Time, or Zep Tepi.  A group known as the Heru Shemsu, or Company of Horus — also called the Company of the Wise, the Companions of Horus, and the Followers of the Widow’s Son — passed down the a body of knowledge through the ages.  Each pharoah, down to Roman times, was an Initiate of the Company of Horus and thus privy to this secret knowledge.

Gnosticism ~ A Discussion (Series)

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In 1945 an Egyptian peasant discovered a collection of early Christian scriptures – the Nag Hammadi Codices, which revealed the existence of a Gnostic version of Christianity. Gnostics (derived from the Greek word gnosis – meaning `knowledge’) felt that they could get to know God, and their own soul, going a step beyond faith. Their message, and the words of the `Gnostic Gospels’ were buried in the sand of the Egyptian desert. Some scholars now believe these scriptures to be just as authentic, if not more so, than the books we collectively know as the New Testament.

In the late 12th century `Cathars’ started preaching an alternative form of Christianity to that of Roman Catholicism, in the French region of Languedoc. Empowering abstinence and poverty, they called themselves Good Men, and believed that the world was an alien environment for man’s soul. The Roman Catholic Church tried unsuccessfully to persuade them they were wrong. Then came the Inquisition, followed by the Albigensian Crusade which crushed the rebels with a military campaign. The `heretics’ were burned at the stake by the hundreds, and again Gnosticism was supressed. Brian Blessed plays a Cathar Bishop, and Ian Brooker plays a Spanish Monk, in an attempt to recreate a theological dispute in France, 1206.

Egyptian Gnostics texts came to Florence in 1492. The Gnostic idea, that man has the capacity to rise above his worldly fate to become a spiritual being, even to be `as God’ was the heretical centrepiece of Renaissance philiosophy. This spiritual notion was forced underground by by the Catholic Church’s opposition, and into the world of magic and alchemy. However a modern millionaire, Joost Ritman, is an example of how Gnoticism continues to defy the passage of time, to re-emerge in every spiritual era.

The Gnostic Gospels said that the world was no place for the divine soul of man, that the world was tragic and that it wasn’t created by God, but by a lower life divinity. To the question “Did a good God create a world of pain” they replied that there was a crack in the universe. The first 20th century scholar to read the Gnostics was C.G.Jung – their `Gnosis’, or knowledge, was to him spiritual self-knowledge. In this programme, scholars debate the relevence of the Gnostic `pulse’ for modern man.