How the Occult Transformed Philosophy & Spirituality 

Consider Supporting Esoterica! Patreon - www.patreon.com/esotericachannel Merch - ru-vid.com/show-UCoydhtfFSk1fZXNRnkGnneQstore New to Studying Esotericism? Check out my Reading Guide here - docs.google.com/document/d/1caKNlW7sogEF7lAeYNbOQF9pt5O5b70yAXa-icUJO3o/edit?usp=sharing Rare Occult Books - www.esotericaoccultbooks.com/

I'm a philosophy professor and just this last semester I offered at my university a travel-study course called, "Esoteric Amsterdam," where, along with traveling to the Biblioteca Hermetica Philosophica in Amsterdam, I had my students read alchemical and mystical texts by authors such as Paracelsus and Boehme and then looked at the reverberations of this tradition in modern thought on, reading texts from Swedenborg, Schelling, and Steiner. The students loved it, I had a blast, and I hope to offer the course again. So this is one philosopher who does not ignore this tradition!

after growing up religious, renouncing religion, and being athiest for a while, i have recently began studying the occult and utilizing metaphysical concepts to find a 'spiritual' balance in my life and it has completely changed my perception of everything. love this channel and this video is illuminating and affirming!

Ex-philosophy major here, I am absolutely here for the academic philosophy slander.

Hi, Dr. Sledge. I am one of your 'philosophy people.' I just wanted to compliment you on (and thank you for) a concise summary of ancient philosophy that doesn't suck. It was highly informative without rambling, and you didn't talk just to hear yourself. The role played by occultism in the resurgence of realism was something quite new to me. My education is admittedly sparse in that area. I know more than many of my peers, but I would sit like a kid with my chin in my hands, just listening, around you and @ModernHermeticist. In my experience, if you get any history of philosophy in the medieval period in departments in (most of) the anglophone world, you pretty much jump from Aquinas to Descartes; from there, medieval metaphysics is mostly abandoned, and the de facto 'beginning of western philosophy' shifts to the debates between empiricism and rationalism. Forget the Renaissance! Renaissance who?

Superrational Prophetic Intercourse would make a decent band name

The occult is kind of an odd mix of psychology, philosophy, and mythology. Now we have things organized into separate disciplines for the sake of focus and occult thinking is easily dismissed as faith based superstition, but there are still insights and merits. It definitely helps if you’re creatively inclined.

It's very refreshing to see this kind of content, on RU-vid or anywhere in general! To the point of examining occult philosophies within their historical context: I've had a few heated arguments with Thelemites after saying that Aleister Crowley was an orientalist (and a very typical one at that) riding the very tail end of the British Empire and egyptomania, and that that's undoubtedly influenced Thelema. I had a similar problem trying to explain who Aleister Crowley was and why he might be relevant to the discussion to my philosophy/cultural studies professor.

Dr. Sledge: I adore your channel and you presentation style. You are a great orator, a great explainer, a great researcher, and a great guy.

It's sad because the majority of believers don't actually want to learn the academic side of the occult and most of the non-believers don't even take the subject seriously because they [wrongly] mistake Academic Occult Studies for supernatural religious beliefs. EDIT: I thought it was obvious this was about the mass majority of both groups, so I wasn't cautious about my wording. I edited to make it clearer.

I’m astonished. We (Italy) have mandatory class of philosophy in high school and even adolescents have their fair share of medieval philosophy.

I keep coming back to this channel for the depth and style of delivery, so eloquent so well thought out and delivered with a brilliant sense of style

I'm enjoying my time at the Sledge Graduate School of Philosophical Studies.

Just wanted to say, I don't have a spiritual bone in my body, but keep reading books that draw heavily on mystic themes. I've often tried to read about things like tarot and alchemy, but struggled to stay interested or remember what I'd read. However, been watching your videos for the past couple months, and you manage to keep me engaged and entertained in a topic I normally struggle with. Thank you very much for doing these videos for us!

This video is not only a great introduction to the history of the ocult but a great lesson on the history of philosophy

your script writing is fire, thank you

Sorry to hear about your training! After listening to your intro, I felt very lucky for the philosophy seminars I had. Medieval and religious philosophy courses at my undergrad and courses on mysticism and a variety of courses like that in grad school. As a professor now, I make sure to include these topics and influences as much as I can. Thank you for always giving me more wisdom to share

Of all your videos I have seen, this was my favorite. As soon as it was over, I watched it again. Something about these ideas hit me as massively profound in a way I cannot explain. No one has ever been able to sum up the idea of magical philosophy in the High Middle Ages like this for me. I think my path is altered as a result of watching it. Thank you for your work.

Philosophy major here. No Medieval philosophy courses were offered in your philosophy department?! You should have come to the University of Alberta. I took an early Medieval philosophy course there and not only did we talk about Medieval notions of mysticism we actually had a guest speaker who claimed to have had mystical experiences.

Brilliant, Justin. And long overdue. Thank you for your ongoing efforts. Very much appreciated. Cheers from Toronto.

Thanks for your important work.

surprised to hear this. Aggripa and Mirandola, just the first two you mentioned, not to mention the entire Medieval canon: had classes on all of it here in Brazil during my phil phd. Aggripa is often mentioned in epistemology classes, even have a good friend who wrote a diss on him.

Beware those who seek answers, some truths are more scary or overwhelming then the human heart can bare

Fascinating video! I'm not very familiar with the thinkers you talk about beyond your videos and some other brief "secondary sources" of people mentioning them, so I'm sorry if my questions are misguided, but did the philosophers in this "Realist revival" that came with the Renaissance present arguments for Realism or was it a more descriptive endeavor of showing what are the linguistic universals that shape reality and how they do so? Did they mostly rely on Plato's (and neoplatonic) arguments and ran with it or did they provide new arguments for Realism and rebuttals for Nominalism? Were these rebuttals more experimental, by showing their mystical experiences and magical experiments that would confirm that a Sacred Language does indeed govern the world?

I had to rewind to make sure I heard it right - no class on MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY??!!! What??!! It's like studying mathematics without algerba...

Realism lives!!! (Even if it’s just Mathematical Platonism in cosplay). Great episode Doc Sledge!

I tried to like this video at three separate points in the video. Thank you again.

In my freshman year Western Civilization survey course, we had a nickel tour of this area. I remember the lecturer referring to Pico della Mirandolo as 'a teenager who wanted to be an angel'. Funny, the things that stick after all these years.

I always experience a wry chuckle when I hear the world "enlightenment" to describe what, in the west, is basically materialism, whilst in the east, the term refers to the transcendent state that a human may reach at which point he/she discovers that the world, universe, reality itself, is actually nothing more than consciousness. In the opinion of this occult autodidact, it's the people of the east who got it right. Speaking from experience, I can say that magic absolutely works, (my favorite occult quote of all time: "Magic always works. If what you're doing doesn't work, then it isn't magic.) and somehow I doubt that reality would be so easily bent to the human will if it had an independent material reality. What else could it be than consciousness. For my money, philosophical theories are a fine way to pass the time while drinking a pint with friends, but all the clever jargon in the world won't help you cure an "incurable" disease, or deflect bullets with your will. For that you need magic. You were absolutely right (you usually are,) when you said that the bulk of people studying the occult have never given a damn about what the academics think of their great luminaries. We haven't, don't, and probably never will. Still, it gives me a lovely heartwarming feeling to hear somebody with your caliber of scholarship actually say what a shame it is that the occult philosophers are ignored by academia. It is a shame, but then, do we really want professors and their ilk learning how to cast spells, read minds, fly, etc.?? All the best, N.

Nothing better than to ponder the rational and philosophical on a Friday night with a new video from esoterica. Thank you Professor!

Man... I wish i had you as a philosophy prof at my uni

Your work is phenomenal. I know I've said it before, but it bears repeating that I appreciate all that you put out for the world on these topics!

This is such a great video! It put so much together for me. I can’t believe I never made the connection between renaissance spirituality/humanism and platonism. Amazing stuff.

Fascinating, thank you! As a philosophical dilettante whose interests have leaned toward the mind-body problem, I have to redefine “realist” for this discussion. That is, you’re talking about realists regarding “universals” as opposed to metaphysical realism about the physical world and idealism and panpsychism about consciousness or mind…

19:05 - "irrational 'Enlightenment Rationalism' infused..." 19:12 - "I'm very pro-Enlightenment!" It would rock so hard if we got a Dr. Sledge upload of just continuous ranting about how painfully the term Rationalism is misused today (maybe even touching on how many of its current invokers, like the "effective altruism" crowd, would make our guy Spinoza roll in his grave). Would rock so hard.

OMG. This is such a helpful underlying concept to a bunch of things I have been studying. Makes much more sense now. Thank you!!

Another amazing video! Thank you Justin for your tireless work to uncover the lost philosophy of the past. This video really helped me contextualize the role of occult in influencing mainstream philosophy.

Amazed by your ability to speak “plain” English about difficult material.

Awesome episode. I'm definitely hear for this sort of topic. One of your best, sir.

i wish i could grasp the linguistic stuff but it just goes way over my head

Thank you for all your great work.

Love your work. Very inspiring! I will return to this channel again and again.

A clear & stimulating exposition, as usual... Many thanks! 🙏🏻

what i love about this channel is hearing how no matter what period of history you pick there are people who believe how they see and explain the world is absolutely true. yet we look back and think 'how could they ever believe that?". then I wonder, in the future what beliefs do we have now that will be scoffed at.

interesting correlation between hermeticism and the rise of realism as represented through geometry. the current resurgence of Egyptian biogeometry, which holds that subtle vibrational energies can be harnessed, contained within shapes (eg soundwaves) that determine its function, as demonstrated in the work of Dr. Ibrahim Karim, seems to score major empirical points for the realism camp

Fantastic video! Probably my favorite one yet. Very helpful for you to trace these philosophical threads through history and provide context for the popularity of hermetic and occult philosophy in the renaissance

would love an episode on sacred SWers/courtesans/priestesses etc in the history of esotericism!

Wasn't so sure I was going to care much about this episode, but once again, Dr, Justin triumphs. He's lent a width, breadth, depth and color to how these competing thought processes have influenced thinking since the Middle Ages right down to this very day.

Thank you. This is an outstanding discussion.

"The deeply philosophical position of... other". LOL A great episode, and honestly it helped me under philosophical realism better than my college courses oh so long ago. An aside: as a computer scientist (programmer, systems analyst, data scientist, etc.) I wonder if we all are pretty much secretly all philosophical realists since our abstract and synthetic languages cause physical effects. GOSUB "Part Red Sea" indeed. (yeah, it's in BASIC. For the rubes. Ya think I'd give an example in my preferred C++ and SQL?)

I don't understand why, though the entirety of my undergraduate degree in philosophy, *not a single professor* went like: "Hey! Plato thought concepts and ideas are real-real! Like they exist even if humans don't! Aristotle thought they are human-real, like they are made by humans to make life easier, like governments." It would have made my life so much easier. For someone, anyone, to bring the language down to earth just a little bit. I just remember sitting in lectures and seminars trying to grasp the concept of Forms, grappling with the idea that Plato thought there's some ideal perfect thing that's more perfect than the thing in our world that exists beyond our world that is actually the real thing in the real world and this is just a shadow of it all and thus not the real thing in the real world after all, but the real world doesn't have any kind of physicality to it, it is The Forms uwu. Writing, and reading, that sentence feels like trying to read one page of Hegel. Thankfully I didn't have him on my mandatory curriculum. It's been five years since I graduated and just now am I starting to feel like I can make sense of Plato (and Aristotle), thanks to this video and others like it. Can you believe I actually love philosophy? It gives me a headache 95% of the time, but I do love it. It's like an obstinate child. I was an obstinate child myself, so I'd know.

Amazing episode, Justin! Re. the current interest in realism: Coming from an arty / weird humanities bubble, I can testify how the ‘ontological turn’ with OOO and New Materialism, the inclusion of animism from indigenous voices plus more somatic/performative readings of language in queer, affect and black studies has def threw wood on the realist pile. In what seems an almost post medieval approach, language is most often taken as organic matter that matters us and the world as a whole.

This went so hard. Thank you. :D

Well, we've had to be autodidacts. Even then it was so hard to find anything on the "Occult", so we'd read whatever we could get our hands on. Especially if it didn't make your skin crawl. I was 21 when I found "Secret Teachings of All Ages" (M.P. Hall), and then 36 when I scored "Isis Unveiled" H.P. Blavatsky), but before that, Crawley (talk about skin "crawling) was about it; Anton LaVey was never anyone I was interested in knowing more about (Thank God!, pun intended). It's much easier to find information on "The Occult" now than it was 30 years ago.

Good presentation, good episode! thank you

Is it just me or does Justin's Voice have a calming effect?

Second time through. I expect couple of times more at least. So I am able to spin into the questions that I have and come back to it. Thanks for giving that kind of a lecture.

Thanks!

They see me summonin'... they hatin' That's the 3rd time I've laughed out loud in a coffee shop watching this. Brilliant.

hermes crispychristmas is my new band name!

I Love ALL Esoterica videos!

"crispychristmas" had me hollerin'

WOOO!!! Happy friday!

Loved this video!

I will say this because I do feel comfortable enough to say it. I have been searching for a long time on information that relates to the study of magic, history, religion, and spirituality. Your channel has never provided a video that has disappointed in this regard. The reason why I want to study this material so badly is because, for the longest time, it felt and seemed like there is a lot more to learn about spirituality than what is just in the bible. The bible is still a good book, but it most certainly is not the only book. It is also not just pure occult knowledge, which is a hodgepodge/minefield of bullshit and pseudo-knowledge. My biggest issue that the bible does not explain what a lot of the mysteries of God is, and how a lot of things work. My hunger for this knowledge throughout almost the entirety of my life has been a challenging pursuit, the biggest reason is a spiritual thirst for knowledge in asking the biggest question time and time again. "Why? and How?" Thank you Dr. Sledge, thank you for what you do! Thank you for providing free academic knowledge on this subject, recommending excellent reading material. For the first time in my life, it certainly feels like my spirituality and knowledge can both become one and I can spiritually breathe. And to think that I was seriously thinking about joining fressmasonry so that I could get knowledge in this regard, not even really knowing if most freemasons have this type of knowledge or not.

thanks for all of theses

An episode on golem production needs to be done eventually!!

Yeah....started out loading hay trailers in Lauderdale before the internet. Now I'm watching a Dr. from Pearl, the best I can gather who, by the way, puts out the best content on RU-vid!!!!

Doc, your channel is amazing, love it when I get notifications about your new content

I'd love to watch you do a review on the James Lindsay's lectures on hermeticism and gnosticism's influence on current philosophy

One of my favorite episodes yet!

had to come back and like this banger cus I forgot

I went to grad school at a jesuit university and I am happy report that they did offer a medieval philosophy course. The topics the professor chose to cover were not my favorite, but still a win in my book!

Edward Conze weighed in on Nominalism here and there in the 1930s. Some interesting articles if you dig. Loved your video here. ❤

I, personally, firmly agree with the Nomenalists. I find the idea of Universals or kabalistic ideas of one of the many arbitrary arrangements of sounds and symbols we use to get across ideas and call language having power over reality profoundly narcissistic and narrow minded. To think a description of a thing could have power over the thing itself is fascinating, but ultimately speaks to a fundamnetally backwards understanding of what language is and what it's purpose has always been; to convey information, to describe, not to prescribe. However, that being said, I do think language does have a sort power that is almost magical; the ability to influence the thoughts and emotions of others. The right set of sounds, the right words in the right tone at the right time, and you can change the world more effectively and more broadly than any mage throwing fireballs or conjuring demons.

Have you looked into the Tridactyl Nazca Mummies? Their authenticity made me rethink occult and religion in a grand way.

Hello, I saw your logo "He Conjured" love the Maya people and the Mayan culture. I've come up with several different calendars that... I'm getting off-topic. Do you do any videos on their supernatural world?

Wonderful work as usual! Any chance on getting a citation for that 2020 survey?

An excellent video, as always! I have not yet read Plato, but I have come across the neoplatonists sufficiently to decide that I am probably heavily aligned with him. The relationship between religion and philosophy is always muddy, and as you pointed out, there is a divide between the practitioners who want a religion and the scholastics who want a theory. I always enjoy your artifact collection... What are those nifty little patterned wooden boxes on the shelf to your right?

The Cave and the Light, all about the history of the conflict between Plato and Aristotle in Western civilization is an amazing book.

Greetings from Catholicstan! Been enthralled by your channel for a couple years now. Greatly enjoyed this last one. OK, break's over. Back to studying mathematics.

Now I can imagine why 'occultism 'as such isn't part of a philosophy curriculum . But no Neo-Platonism ? That really surprised me.

the way the occult was treated in my history of philosopy and science 101 at uni was to basically redicule it. I think we touched on sypahetic correspondece, how brains where cosidered to be related to wallnuts becuase they had a similar shape. This is going back 20 years, so thigs may have changed since then.

This just makes me think that The Elden Ring riffs on the Monas Hieroglyphica.

As always admirable work. I recently revisited your video on the mysticism of the death drive. Do you still plan to make a video on Schopenahuer and his idea that occult forces and magic are a prof of existence of the Will you hinted at in that video?

Makes sense remembering things - perhaps that is inspiration?

I guess my history teacher in 9th grade was just exceptionally based because he did teach us about the impact of Platonism, both the more "realistic" and occult versions

Another most elegant and important discussion. Again, THANK YOU!! ( I enjoy the Chopin, end of Nocturne, that plays at the beginning and end of every video. )

666k subscribers. I picked the right time to join 🐐🔥

Hello, Justin! Will you ever cover Nick Land's philosophy? Specially in the Famged Noumena era, his use and understanding of Kabbalah is wild.

I have one critique. Dr. Sledge said the word rewind when his finger was rotating fast forward. Lol

Lookin forward to this one.

Excellent episode.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I wish we could know how Christianity would have developed if it wasn't grown in a culture of Platonic realism!

This is why I’m here… as a pretty committed atheist and “realist”. Reaching for spiritual support is a decidedly human activity that I’m trying to acknowledge and understand better.

Sounds like a Platonic infused Pythagorean theology. Ironic since one of Plato’s most famous writing “Phaedo”(on the soul) was basically about running into a group of Pythagorean’s after Socrates execution, and basically schooling them on the idea of Forms and telling them that the math stuff is just another form but it’s not actually the “ultimate form” if that makes any sense. Philosophy is so hard to convey how intended bc a lot of the technical terms with extremely specific meaning and implications are just thrown around without meaning in most cases sadly lol

Thank you Justin!

That actually did surprise me. In an academic setting, would one consider Plotinus to be "occult?" I am guessing a modern Philosophy curriculum has a lot of Existentialism, Sartre and Camus, as well as other modern thinks like Nietzsche and maybe someone like Wittgenstein to rock the boat a bit? But without a good perspective on the history that underpins it all. But like I said, I'm very much guessing + going off the hints you have dropped. I'm reminded of Alan Watts' anecdote about university philosophers. He would remark how it was most uncouth for a philosopher to ever be caught "philosophizing" at work. And usually to a great laugh from his audience, he would point out that a modern philosopher would come to work in a lab coat "if he thought he could get away with it."

For some reason RU-vid didn't feed this to me when it first came out like it usually does with my subs that i watch routinely. I had to search myself to find this was up. RU-vid is bizarre with this stuff sometimes.

My very limited academic in philosophy was neoplatonism. It was for a gen Ed requirement. Art Sin and Faith.