What is Hermeticism - Then & Now? Conversation  

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Yes, congratulations Dr. Sledge. This honor is entirely deserved. I loved how the presenter called you one "of the most prominent voices" in the field of Hermetica studies. You must have felt a shiver up and down your spine when you heard those words! And maybe you thought it was an exaggeration? No, it wasn't. You clearly are a leading figure and your work as a "divulger" (as you certainly know this comes from the Latin verb "dis - vulgare", "to make public", as in the "Vulgata",) a prestigious title that applies to those who take complex and sometimes forbidding arguments for specialists and explain them effectively and honestly to the wider public. Thank you for your work.

It is so refreshing to hear this man talk. I thought that academia was light years behind practicing magic. Most scholars concentrate on safe and facts. Few talk about the light the connection with ourselves and our higher selves. ❤❤❤. Thanks for this.

Congratulations, Dr Justin Sledge, on this edifying accomplishment that is your overall tremendous work and this pinnacle discussion of yours and Prof. Dr Wouter Hanegraaff! On Hermeticism, at the Embassy of the Free Mind!! 📖 📚 I will jocularly contend the daimones were actually working hard to deliver the sound of this wonderful dialogue! And thank you for your tireless work in delivering thoughtful rigorous esoteric content, context, and analysis with this wellspring platform that is Esoterica, fellow channels, and academic colleagues!

a mind-opening intellectual feast. Many thanks to dr.Sledge and prof.hanegraaff.

I’m so glad this topic of hermetics is gaining attention

23:48 What the Hermetica is really about: contrary to common belief, it is not about escaping the material world, but about its transformation. (How valid is creative interpretation as a process of re-discovery? To be meaningful (or stay meaningful, or become meaningful again) all tradition has to make contact to the current reality. Since history goes forward in a spiraling motion, and is not a circular motion that repeats exactly, at best it rhymes. Thus discovering the original meaning in the original context (literary criticism) is only helpful in the first step. We still have to make it rhyme afterwards with the currents and undercurrents of our own reality. In order not to feel lost and alone, we have to constantly establish and recreate connections to the past and our fellow humans, and to build towards the future aiming high. If we only aim for the possible, and the continuation of the past, we will regress (and regret). We need to aim high, towards the ideal, towards the impossible, so we can end up with the possible, with progress, and not end up with regress and regret. P.S.: I’ve been watching Jonathan Pageau speaking / listening to Richard Rohlin lately (“Universal History”-playlist), and yesterday a clip of Victor Frankl, and it lead me to making this comment the way I did. And also to the following ideas: I think, that how we understand history really shows the difference between Protestants vs Catholics vs Orthodox. - Protestants be like: God only has our hands; if we don’t advance the Kingdom of God, it won’t come. We are the chosen ones. Failure is not an option. - Catholics be like: This is hubris. We are Sinners and can only fail, when we try to deliver the Kingdom of God. Our failing exists for God to come forth to show his great mercy and glory. Our own failure is guaranteed, God will rectify this at the end of days. - Orthodox be like: Don’t bother: The Kingdom of God is well underway. Discovering how we partake in it, is all we need to do and even all we ever can do. As an Atheist, I used to be allergic to “channeling the light” and seeing the hand of God in human history, but as I progress, I welcome all interesting vantage points and like taking them not as my own, but just to try out and to see the world from different angles. I even started doing “creative interpretation” of traditions and legends and myths from my own point of interest - from the view of modern Catastrophism in search for our lost human history / a lost civilization: and it’s been great fun to speculate and create my own theories. I used to think, that I was an atheist, because I wasn’t interested in believing unbelievable things: but then I noticed my interests in all kinds of conspiracy theories and UFOs and Lost Civilizations. I believe more BS now, than I ever did as a Christian. And it is a lot of fun. The pendulum might swing back soon, and I might become ultra conservative in my old age, and regret all the time wasted in exploration, and wished I had settled down on a closed world view. But it’s not time yet.) 55:09 our state of consciousness limits the currently available knowledge we can obtain at that moment; no state encompasses all the knowledge alone 1:03:20 the loving and giving and living world creating function at the base layer of our consciousness. I think that ties in pretty well with what Joscha Bach describes: we don’t have access to the physical world, we only have access to our own simulation/ model of the world in our mind; and every now and then it activates the learning and attention circuit, when it stumbles upon a difference between the underlying mechanics of the world that was badly represented in the information condensed model and therefore every now and then our model needs adjusting, and the wake / attention / learning layer gets called up to amend / fix our continuously running world model. Although I think, that it is an ontological mistake, when we falsely interpret the integrated-world-model creating layer of our own mind as God, or the source of the outer universe / the physical universe. To say that our own little glint of light within us is capable of recognizing or even echoing the real base layer of physics (- “the one big, only light”), just because it is literally emergent on its substrate, ignores the structural differences at the different size and organizational layers of the Universe. Our own mind came into being literally as a side-effect of the regulation needs of a monkey / the hairless ape(- to stay in the parlance of Joscha Bach). - The regulation needs of the Universe, or the Earth / Gaia, or 5he Bacteria in our Gut biome are vastly different. - This doesn’t deny the fact, that all Turing machines can emulate each other. - Well: maybe the light recognizes the light: that’s probably our only hope, once AGI takes over…

coincidentally, just started reading a Kybalion... got the distinct feeling that the brain is the philosopher's stone? transmuting metals (heavy, earthly, shadowy thoughts or/and feelings) into gold (light= positive, altruistic, compassionate thought and/or feelings) Reading Thunder perfect Mind blew my mind, thank you for that recommendation! Wish I could do more for Esoterica, dr, it's amazing to have this on youtube. Best wishes ✨

I'm glad that this channel has gained so many new viewers in such a short time.

Wow, so cool to see you able to have this discussion! Some giants of the field. Thanks!

I visited The EFM in July, and was moved to tears. Really enjoyed this round table event, thank you so much.

1:31 You did this same thing for me back in the beginning of esoterica and sent me on my current academic trajectory. You took that which was granted to you and passed it on to others which is amazing. I want to do that myself one day since I’m still grateful for the rewards I’m reaping because of it! Glad to see your efforts pay out and the channel thrive and prosper.

... and the perfect synchronicity of this video with the enrollment this evening into my PhD course where I use Hermes / the Magician as an archetypal lens to explore prehistoric art. Thank you, dr. Sledge, you now seem to be a constant presence in my postgrad experiences

Great discussion! Keep up the awesome job, Dr Sledge 👏⚒️

Thank you, thank you, Sir, as always. 👍

Dr. Sledge. Sir. You are a great man. Your contributed articulations of deep history, and character are worthy of some form of eternal recognition. Consider this stranger your friend. Thank you.

It's so great that you got to be a part of this and be recognized. Your scholarship about the bundling of the books opened my eyes about this, since it's not so much a modern practice except in fiction anthologies now. I can see where just being bundled with another text could pre-color one's view of their readings of each individual text. Yes, my area is psychology, in case you were wondering how I came into this.

Ordered the book. Thanks! I let them know I came from your video Dr Sledge. 💙

I love to hear about your passion. I find the subject completely fascinating. Thank you for the work you have put in and the gift of your RU-vid channel.

Excellent. I didn't know they had such presentations at the Ritman Library (aka Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica). Dr. Sledge is definitely in his element!

Dr. Sledge thank you so much for your scholarship, your enthusiasm and your generosity in making the examination of the esoteric sciences available in such a detailed and objective manner. As is the subject matter, your discussions can be dense especially to the newcomer, narrowly read or the uninitiated, but I always find myself exposed to authors, ideas and historical figures that are new and interesting to me. Kudos on your dedication. May your work reach those eyes and ears most receptive and in need towards the betterment of mankind. Peace and blessings.

Thanks for including the introductory talk by Professor Hanegraaf. I was personally struggling with the ideas of matter being created and emanating from God, and also of matter being a prison for human divine souls, as both concepts are deeply expressed in the Corpus Hermeticum. Professor Hanegraaf's talk really helped me see how these two concepts don't actually contradict each other.

I secretly smile when I see your notification pop up ...thank you.

Great Talk Justin. From the guy of Venezuela ;D, And yes its more complicated than that. The substance is just a key, the door is bigger and richer, the temple is beyond any key and any door.

Looking forward to more! I watch the original on the Embassy Of The Free Mind channel. Excellent discussion.

Thank you very much for sharing this.

Great video. I’m going to watch this more than once for sure. Thank you

I’ve only just come across your page in the last few weeks but it’s already one of my favorite channels. The love you have for the subject is very evident and I always appreciate a non-biased scholarly approach to such deep topics. I’m super happy for you that you reached a life goal and I can’t wait to see more from this event!

Such an amazing book for such a low price compared to some of the brill books in my personal library. A great holiday gift for myself. Also, thanks for bringing this content to us. It's humbling to be a part of this discourse and I'm happy that you got to meet one of your heroes. I'd feel the same if I ever run into you in my wanderings.

amsterdam tourism just got better. Visiting this Biblioteca is now added to my bucket list.

Got a little offended when you were introduced as Justin Sledge without the Dr. (not that youtuber isn't a perfectly legitimate occupation) Looking forward to listening to this all :D

Being a neo-hermeticist, I appreciate your admiration for our journey to explore and discover the mysteries of spirituality and the mechanics of the universe through the prism of our own research and experience. I have come to some pretty profound understandings in my time which started in my teen years. Would you be interested in reading an interpretation/commentary of text if I were to share?

What an incredible moment. Proud to be there with you Dr. Sledge.

This is a fascinating discussion. I’ll be sure to follow Embassy of the Free Mind.

I was about to watch a different upload of yours when this popped up - talk about auspicious timing~

Dude...this is monumentous

How exciting, thank you!

I have returned over years to a more rational state.... At one difficult point I broke-down in the street upon witnessing an act of kindness... i get what is being stated by Hannegraaf around 58:00 about nous ([k]nowse in northern english?) and relative states of perception... returning to a similar state without a pathology would seem to require psychedelics.. thanks for great event

Fascinating stuff, even more determined now to try and afford to stock up on decent books of philosophy, magic, hermeticism etc al. It's hard to know where to start however, the only classics I actually own are the Hermetica, Plato's Republic, and Last Days of Socrates. And the Goetia 😅 unless you count the Prince and a pile of random books about various mythological pantheons

1: 40 video from the Rabbi of black metal on a Tuesday...... excellent.

Hello Justin, Showing what other texts the Corpus Hermeticum was published together with in its various editions is an astute and conclusive approach to shine some further light on the philosophical/scientific/occult landscape the latter was perceived as being part of. This indeed lends support to Frances A. Yates' views who (despite modern attempts at "debunking" her) was right in almost every respect. Furthermore, in my opinion, underlying the presentation of these magical, demonological, Platonic, Pythagorean, and related writings along with the Hermetic ones was a valid perception that the ideas presented in all these texts are actually compatible with and complementing each other. That is, in their essence, and if looked at on profound enough a level--regardless of individual authors' particular angles, emphases, and other variations. I am aware that a lot of contemporary academics may not agree with this syncretic type of view, however, many esotericists would--both now and back then. And of course, it was the latter faction that the aforementioned publishers and their audience came from. Talking about Prof. Haanegraf's presentation, one thing I liked was the emphasis it laid on Lodovico Lazzarelli's still little recognised contribution to the unfolding of Hermetism in the Renaissance and subsequent times. Also the important insight that the aim of the Hermetic practitioner (magus, alchemist...) was and is to guide the spiritual light into the physical world. Keep up the good work! :) Michael

Great discussion. Thanks😊

This episode is in a word a triumph 😊.

I love this!

This was excellent! Thanks a lot. Justin, in this unscripted format your presentation comes so much more alive and yourself more authentic than in the scripted format. I like your other videos, too. But I like this one much better. Maybe there could be a middle ground between scripted and unscripted? Thanks again for your work. You’re the man!

Hermetica is one of the most important argentinian metal bands

Perfect! My copy of Copenhaver's Hermetica just arrived. (Per your recommendation, of course.) This is awesome timing! Thank you, Dr. Sledge!

This is such a succinct explanation for a question that has nagged at me for some time. Thank you!

Great talk! Congrats!!👏🏻

Wow, this is just great, very thoughtful conversation Congrats Dr. Sledge, it is always heartwarming to see someone achieving their goals and even better to share one's accomplishments. Thank you very much for this video and for all your work. Muchísimas Gracias

Thank you. I just ordered the book that you’ve recommended: Christ, Plato, Hermes. Trismegistus. 🙏🙏🙏

Congrat. Dr. Sledge one more time. Interested what Prof. Hanegraaff told about Lazzarelli's Corpus Hermeticum transl. Some more hints on that topic needed. Your help would be more than welcome.... Dr. Sledge, indeed; great job!!!

Completely unrelated to the video, but I would be very interested in your take on the philosophy of Philipp Mainlander. In particular, his concept of the will to death and his interpretation of Christianity. His deus absconditus-like conception of God and creation is very unique and very gnostic imo. Thank you for all you do! Channels like yours are what I hoped for as a kid trolling through occult and esoteric forums in the 90s and early 2000s.

Great stuff ,i loved how he said basicly we wont know until we go,look study but dont come to an conclusion because we truly dont know that world yet,thanks for the video

Bravo! That was a menagerie of badassery. I had watched a video on the James Web telescope changing our concept of time and then a video on the 11 dimension model .In this description of the 11 dimensions it discussed how the object wasn't to travel to the higher dimension but to make contact with it in order to transform our 3rd dimensional reality. Your discussion has transformed a few things relating to all these subjects for me. THANK YOU!

Thank you for sharing this! Very very helpful! The whole presentation!

So wonderful! Wowee.

Amazing episode. Thank you so much for sharing this and making this kinda of high quality scholarship available and accesable ❤

Congratulations to you on your continuing work from a fellow Michigander... 👏

I had my copies of the Plato, Christ Hermes turn up this week. They are amazing, and smell amazing too!!!

Approved by Poimandres.

Love ,love, love You!!!

Congratulations on your accomplishment. For me this channel represents that same sort of thing, taking a complex subject and communicating it a wide audience, while also adding a depth to our own reality. Love your work, it's been inspirational in my pursuit of a philosophy / religious studies degree. As you allude to in your talk, the dogma leaves a lot out of the story.

Been expecting this meet for a long time Doc, I hope you can bring him to the channel for an interview along side our guy @The Modern Hermeticist

You volunteer a word I have never needed to use before, talking of defining it as if it is a given I would have any need to have it defined.

In Hanagraaf's presentation I notice a tension (which isn't to say an error) between the idea that reality is a pure, non-dual light and his thesis that the hermetic magician strives to channel that light into this world. The latter implies that darkness and perhaps a substantial amount of it exists here, and that the magician also receives a moral mandate, not just a noetic infusion from the light. The oldschool view on hermeticism as I understand it is that darkness--light mapped to ignorance--knowledge, yet Hanegraaf makes the magician's path out as one of brotherly love. Maybe that sounds uncontroversial, but I both agree with Hanegraaf that it really is different from how gnostic hermeticism has often been presented, and also feel that to a great extent it retreads basics from the Abrahamic faiths, and moreover feel that those faiths have a better-developed conceptual vocabulary around that light, darkness, and right action.

Thank You. I have followed Joost Ritman for many many years. I know the history of his library. I have a few books from their library. Incunabula (I own 3 fragments) is a passion of mine. Economic determinism depleted my library alas; I had to pay property tax. Never will I ever be able to visit there alas. Thank you for fulfilling a dream of mine if only, for me, vicariously.

Thanks!

Theres was a very popular heavy metal Band here in Argentina🇦🇷 called "Hermética". The name was taken by this philosophical/religious tradition.

Thank you

A great scholar with great vídeos with the name of a wrestler.

Awesome date for it too! 23.6.2023 2x3=6. Not exactly gematria, but still cool.

Hello mr sledge i have question can you learn 1 on 1 and how can I contact you?

51:00 This little light of mine...

There is so much piled into the discussion I would need to write a book to respond to it all. For someone who is not a mystic you seem to grapple with the divided world dichotomy pretty well. Thought I wouldnt call it soterological/philosophy. I think salvation is something people want. And parallel, what you two seem to be saying here is people wanted magic, so they surrounded the text with magical stuff. People want to believe the experience of the mind is something bigger than their mind, so they add stuff about the Nous. And this here is the core of the problem with mysticism that requires it to be esoteric. If you have all these precepts in your experience, then your experience reflects off your precept. Magic makes certain exaggerated experiences easier, but then what you get out of the experience is magical. I think the idea of finding the inner light is a noble goal, but invariably people attach their baggage to the quest, and once they get to the destination its all about the baggage and not so much the quest itself. "Oh I saw a white light and the angels (or Jesus, or Krishna, or Moses)" We need to see here something about belief cliches, its probably the most important message coming from the talk. There are texts, maybe 2 or three from people who were developers, and these text flow out and change. And the original texts disappear and so that there is no vantage point to the original texts just other beliefs systems using parts of the text. Abzu. "When in the beginning" there was an idea of a water spirit that came from a swamp that surrounded eridu. Then of course people developed a higher idea, a creater deity, so the water sprite needed to be male and he needed to have a mate to have children. And that child then has here own child who is a water god, a wisdom god, and you have cults to the wisdom god, sages, and they have their own associated magic. Then that god merges with arabian gods. Then its sages makes the other gods dissappear and its priests and scribes write books. A reader of the books would be completely oblivious to the water sprites, the creator goddess, or the original god. But then other writings are discovered and we see the sprite as an agent of a great flood, his mate being opened up to create all kinds of things, and tell-tale things about the original unmasked god littered through out the text as if a dog marks trees, as if to say the author is wise to these old wisdom, but that he thinks he has the best assemblage. We need to see text like the corpus hermeticum the same way. There is no absolute truth, no absolute wisdom, just bits and pieces of older truths and wisdoms assembled in different ways. From an esoteric perspective I want to hammer on this notion. The mystic is never going to get better information than this, and even this information is too much; its pollution. And the more authors add to it, the more pollution it is, this is what the lecture is pointing out, the more that it was edited the more pedestrian the text became. Esotericism is not easy, its hard and its not for everyone. And so exotericism is easy, you assemble shiney trinkets, chants, drugs, ideas and blink, garbage in garbage out. The journey is within, let it be so. And without the pollution these demons and angels disappear. And without them the gods and nuos disappear. And when all of these have disappeared what does one have, either what was within to begin with or nothing. Go back to Eridu, the first mystics sitting between the great waters, no nuos, no gods. Their people literally built everything. Western civilization begins where they sat. Why we need religion, what do texts tell us to do? Obey. Be obedient to something higher, you cannot look on the face of god, you must simply obey. The mysticism is arguing, hey you want the elect path, seek the higher being. This is exotericism, its somebody wanting to give you something but they want you to believe something in return. Its not the way. Its path is false. Thus a good lecture, its just the primary speaker just needs to take that one last step.

Great presentation,been chasing that light most of my life,seems to me that if one removes the cultural veneers,and just look at what human beings are searching for regardless of earth placement....well...we the keystone species bask in the same light

120:46 Daniel 5 was not Barrels, it was vessels or goblets, and Nebuchadnezzar wasn’t even there.

Divine Mother is described as an Infinite Pillar of Light. She is Energy. Vibration. Light is metaphor for Supreme Wisdom. That Wisdom is of Unity. This is Santana Dharma in Hinduism ... The Eternal Truth.

Not hermetically closed but opened had me 😎😎😎

The Poemandres text seems to me to show signs of the Dhyanas, which makes me wonder if this has its origins in the Therapeutae (Theravada) Buddhists?

There might be something to search in the Native American cultures too! The were no primitives, were capable of thinking and sure enough to come to a vision of a pyramidal structure too, a phase which seems to have been overcome with a almighty socialist approach, and yet the place of rebirth of the psychedelic interest. The other day a saw a video where and archeologists David Wengrow was signaling the importance of the Americas. Dmt, yoga, nde, whatever brings the brain mechanism closer to the “light”, wether it is just a sort blue screen of our brain, but I doubt that as it seems the non delirant altered states of consciousness seem to have a limited type of hallucinations must be the reason for our spirituality. Hermes, and others might very well had some conclusions, or to put it brought the light into the body, as I would say in the spirit of this discussion. Was it a dissipation of power and a sharing of resources one such brought back as an idea of salvation and beauty? ( see what happened after the Mexico pyramids culture) It does resemble highly to the ideas of people who had experienced altered states of consciousness. The simple fact that there is a revived interest in esoteric, in Hermes, and also use of consciousness altering substances looks to me that this huge animal, the human kind on Earth is exploring new ideas for a better cohabitation and structure.

Library(records) of Hermetic Philosophy = Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica.

How do I put this? Basically Gnostic means a person with knowledge. This Dr IS that big time. Wow what knowledge. Hermetic is where most Gnostics wind up. Basically a how to for the Activation of the pineal gland to fill up that pineal sac. All TRUE religious endeavors are to that end. Enlightenment or making spiritual connections....

Are you making hard copies of these videos? Do that.

You do a video on the Nag hammadi Library yet?

do you think John Dee actually believed he was summoning angels? If so, was he hallucinating or in some translike state that he saw what wasn’t there?

What is kufy (koofi? koufi?) incense?

9:50

Everyone is in search for the beginning, every other ones are in search for the end. Who is in search for the now? If every path looks back and all the others look forward aren't we missing the today's important research hindering future generations?

i need more bumper stickers

❤

God forbid. Nice!

Hmmm 🤔

Dude, 'Bovine diaper filler" made me nose chortle.

So Hermeticism is basically the electromagnetic universe theory, which I myself came into by pure logic and observation, yes the only "force" in the universe is electromagnetism which is light (light is one part of the visible electromagnetic spectrum). Interesting.

The Poimandres vision is an endogenous dmt experience

The Sledge

The building looks like a tectractys

Any part of America that only contains a single inhabitant?

Trying to catch up, Doc ..before Anu comes back to wreck it all again!