Dr. Sledge, I want to sincerely thank you for your content as a whole. I struggle with severe panic attacks that mimic a heart attack very closely. As you can imagine the anxiety and the symptoms can form a pretty nasty feedback loop. Your content and the way you present it is so engaging to me it can pull me out of a spiral that has put me in the emergency room more than once. Im going through a period of time where i dont have insurance and so cant afford my medication. Your content has gotten me through some really terrible times recently and I dont have the words to express how profoundly grateful I am to you and this channel for that. I hesitated to post this because of how personal and uncomfortable this topic is for me but I feel that its important for you to know how deeply your words and acts have positively affected my quality of life and health. Sorry for the rambling nature of this post.
@@Bifeamanteigado thank you. I credit Dr. Sledge for helping me understand the difference between thought and practice. Praxis plays a much more important role in. My theological and philosophical life than belief and understanding and treating them as distinct on a conceptual level has helped me immensely on my road to being a healthier person spiritually, physically and mentally.
"Crowdsourced Education" is a concept I'd very much love to see catch on. The work you've been doing has been amazingly transformative for me personally and quite amazingly is having ripple effects within several esoteric communities (online and offline) that I frequent. I only just about manage to pay rent n eat month to month and wish I could do more but after all that you've done to support accessible academia this donation of just 2$ is being sent solely to inform you I'll be signing up for your Patreon at the 7.50$ tier (I can't afford to go beyond that). Not to belabour the point but you have my sincere gratitude and highest respect. "Practitioner" is a loose word. In my books anyone who furthers The Great Work is a practitioner but I won't force the title onto you XD It can't be denied you do exactly that though :)
Thanks, I'm very happy that the educational content I'm creating is making a positive impact. But, I also understand that many people simply cannot financially support a RU-vid channel and that makes perfectly good sense given the state of the world. I'm just very blessed that the crowdfunding model is working at this time and I'm able to do this work.
I wanted something to listen to on my commute home yesterday. I was like SWEET an episode on Agrippa! Then he says it's a COURSE! AN ENTIRE COURSE! I was dancing in my car. I was so excited. This first lecture was great. I was laughing out loud when he was describing the "Daddy Chill" HCA was getting from his friends.
Doctor Sledge, thank you for giving a resource which tells us author and manuscript by name. As an occultist, before I found your channel, finding such a thing was extraordinarily difficult and if/when I make money from the study, you're getting the first donation in my name, thanks Dr. Sledge.
Adding a couple extra bucks here on top on my Patreon subscription to say thanks. I’ve got a stable job now and I’m excited to return to supporting you. I watch your videos every week and I’m excited about the new Agrippa course.
A friend and I have been doing LIVE readings of this on TikTok. We are now on the last 4 chapters. We read through it from a practitioners approach. But the problem is that so many of his ideas and much of his philosophy come from sources that if you're not an academic, it's hard to fully grasp where he's coming from. So I'm super excited for these lectures.
Being a small part of this channel has been fun for some time, being able to enjoy the content has always been extremely exciting. If for nothing else thant that I will try to continue to support the channel. It is always a pleasure even if my mind is not always ready to get all the new knowledge.
I am so excited for this series! My son is named Cornelius and I’m into occultism, but not until AFTER I named him did I even know of Agrippa! Thank you so much for this information ❤️ and all the work you do and share.
I found the Tristhemius and Agrippa's letter exchange to be incredibly tender. The way they addressed each other 🥹 Not the modern student-professor exchange, but more like fondest friends ❤
Just started watching and I want to thank you for all you do, Dr. Sledge 🥰 And also thanks to the crowdfunders! Thank you too for making this possible to be open for all of us!
Dr. Sledge, I want to thank you for all the work you've done here. I've always had a simmering fascination with magic, mysticism, and the occult and I stumbled across this channel from I think the Modern Hermeticist maybe a year or so ago. I recently began working on my masters degree in Near Eastern studies with a focus on the Mesopotamian world, and I plan on my doctoral thesis to be essentially an English language compendium of as much Mesopotamian magic as I can cram in. Plowing through your videos has vastly expanded my understanding of the occult and esoteric and is a consistent inspiration behind work I'm kinda trying to do myself and that I see as highly complementary to my field, and definitely complementary to my interests. So yeah good shit man keep it up.
Don't know much about Agrippa, but I have come around to the idea that the history of Western philosophy has huge ideologically motivated gaps (omitting nearly all of the middle ages to start). So I'm looking forward to the series.
Oh thank goodness! I have tried so many times to sit down and read the 3 books. Its not a nail-biter. I have longed for a documentary on Agrippa; this is way better. Thank you so much for doing this, Dr. Sledge!
Hello Dr. Sledge, thank you for this series. Like you, I am not a practitioner of any forms of occultism or esotericism, but I've been a long-time follower of the channel. I don't even really remember the details of how I got into all of this. If I remember correctly, it was my desire to deepen my studies in theology that led me to want to know more about Kabbalah and some magical texts from an academic view. I liked the way you presented the topics, which also made me watch your other videos on alchemy and other subjects you covered. That's why I'm now also watching this series on Agrippa's occult philosophy. Thank you again. I'm always happy to learn more.
Wow, very interesting! I don’t know much about Agripa’s philosophy. Fifteenth century was a time of Renaissance. It is definitely my favourite time in history… So since he went to Florence during that time, I wonder if he met with Medici or any Renaissance artists or architect. It feels like it was all so interconnected back then.
I bought and read all 3 books when Eric Purdue first released his English translation. Navigating the text of Agrippa has been a fun journey and could definitely use your expertise. The first book seriously confused me only later I discovered Agrippa was sourcing other information like from Pliney the Elder. My main point is there's a lot of much help needed to navigate the text and I'm excited for these classes you are putting together.
I read his three books many times and understand them very well but in the beginning I didn't I started my path with Magick and the Western occult with the mind set the older the better and why start with these new guys lets start with all the guys they learned from so right away I thanked God for google and Amazon and RU-vid over the past 20 years it helped me understand Much of his work, the Magus shoot off as Well as Dee and Levi, im so thankful for this course and its going to be great hearing about him going out and debubking himself.
This is so cool. Thanks for doing your best to provide honest, precise and nuanced information. It is the good faith approach that i wish for all of us to experience.
My contribution to engagement! Also thank you. I've encountered a horde of philosophers I didn't know about because of you. And that's the best kind of horde.
So excited for this. I’ve been craving exactly this kind of coverage of his thought and work and have felt unready to even read the three books because I have wanted the context in order to understand it. 🎉🎉
This is amazing! Please, please, please, do a video in full Latin. I’m learning and would love to hear it from my favorite teacher. Thank you, Dr. J.S., I appreciate your wisdom 🎉
I’m not really an occultist per se, but I enjoy drawing sigils as a hobby and to help expand my artistic style. I happened to stumble across Agrippa’s chapter on making sigils with a “Notaricon” Which was really interesting.
ahhh this is sick especially after seeing u on varn this week. the trajectory of ur work has been crazy over the years and this year’s been even better!
I think he merits the attention even though we had to read him for certain goal posts;). His other books are definitely missed by many…great idea..Dr Sledge.
Ibreaded the latin with my italian accent trying to sound as natural as i could and i had a feeling like i have it in my dna who knows for real, i had a strong connection with the past feeling , from the arcaic sound of my language and tye meanings. Thank you for this precious new lesson
Fantastic. I doubt this is gonna be your most highly watched series, but it's filling a gap that needed filling. Incidentally, I think I've noticed an uptick in discussion about "western esotericism" online, including among creators I had already been following. I kinda suspect this channel is gonna function as a Velvet Underground for videoessayists and other online middlebrow thinky people - your fav youtuber's fav youtuber. You could almost describe it as... esoteric. Look I made a pun.
Okay, this began as a joke in my head that Agrippa sounds autistic. I’m autistic, diagnosed a decade ago almost, read oodles of autistic memoirs, have organized multiple autistic communities & events, etc. - essentially, I’m very familiar with autistic narratives & their common tropes. I’m only 40min into this video, and I swear I’ve checked off a dozen things that could potentially be attributed to autism. I hold this very loosely; I’m just highly amused. What got brought me here to comment: Saying he was a lifelong Catholic while also doing things that bypassed church authority. Made perfect sense to me. We relate to authority & hierarchy differently from non-autistic folks. I immediately thought of a couple different justifications he could’ve played with that wouldn’t feel like a stretch of reconciling the two positions. We generally understand authority figures as figurative. If he felt connected to a greater version of that same “power”, to him it might not feel like breaking the rules at all. Other check marks that he could be autistic (none of these count on their own; it’s the aggregate that creates weight of meaning): -Notoriously bad at court life usually means bad at following social scripts -Deep diving multiple special interests -Moving a lot & having a lot of jobs -Finding a subversive community to belong to Anyway, anyway. I was already so excited & grateful for this series. I didn’t know I was going to get a bonus of playing the “is this historical figure autistic?” game. 😂
Omg that might explain why I feel so close to him 😳 Paracelsus is another interesting character, he disavows the academic community and says that the Roma people and old women taught him more useful things which is very uncool socially at the time! His writings about elemental creatures are so cool, he wandered a lot it seems. I can't diagnose long dead people but he's not average at all either.
So excited for this series! My belief in astrology is reinforced by watching this video and reading on the life of Agrippa. Him and I share many of the same characteristics and we were born one day a part, obviously him centuries ago. Lol Thank you so much for this work, I am frequent viewer and will be contributing as a patreon!
