There was an incredibly good thread on “initiation into hermetics” and I feel this is a terribly good book, many know terribly little about at all. I want to Thank You all for sharing your experiences, I didn’t even know there were forums to discuss that book, or much interest in Hermetics at all.
In my experience, Bardon’s works are fairly prolific for anyone of this time period, and I feel far more attached to his works than Crowley’s, despite how immensely popular they seem to be…I think it is in large part to Crowley’s wholesale rejection of Christianity, in favor of hedonistic black magick.
I feel that many are terribly unaware of the facts as to how Hermeticism emerged in Europe, after being exterminated by the Church over 1000 years before. I’ve engaged in a massive study of history in order to start understanding the origin and flows of certain types of spiritual knowledge.
Some people on the LHP in particular say authors like Bardon are fairly “religious”, too much so to work with, I feel like saying that is like a slap in the face and truly ignorant thing to say if you know the frameworks of Gnostic Ritualist history, and that of Hermetics. And this is really why I even make this post at all. I’m just trying to explain what my study has revealed to me about this whole affair. I have found that although I had an excellent traditional education the last 2000 years, this was something I did not know, that helped me gain new interpretations of this entire period of history, simply looking at when and where this knowledge emerged, and in particular, how it was suppressed in the first place.
Both Gnosticism and Hermeticism were part of the original Christian movement the church subverted and attempted to exterminate between 200-400 A.D. Only succeeding in driving them underground and although the reemergence of gnostics less than 1000 years later was exterminated as well, the reemergence of Hermetics was a complete success thanks to 2 major factors.
- The printing press.
- Brilliant and extreme plans of Cosimo de Medici, which some incredibly well versed historians have pointed out triggered the Renaissance and reemergence of Hermetics through his translations of various ancient texts, and in large part to a single action of great cunning, and an ability to pursue his own “book fetish” to truly impressive degrees, that may perhaps only be available to the profanely rich of the planet, of which, he was also the greatest.
This first part of this great event was dreamed up in 1438, however this political aspects of this whole event prevented it from happening until Winter of 1439 in the Vatican.
Wherein Cosimo tricked the Church into inviting Byzantine-Greek scholars from the Church in the East (Orthodox) who he knew were in possession of such texts…by absolving certain debts of the Vatican, and offering to throw a lavish celebration “in their honor” to supposedly reunite these parties as one new church as a disguise for the affair. Of course, the pope, like most popes and their “heavenly father” himself, was apparently too stupid to balance a check book and agreed to the whole affair probably out of necessity and a very insecure need to be selfishly worshiped (also like his god). The reunion broke apart, and things did not go very well in Constantinople shortly after as many of you know. This act saved an incredible treasure trove of ancient knowledge, and added impressive additions to an already astonishing library that would later serve as a model for the Vatican’s own.
This one man had a desire for lost knowledge to reemerge and to create a Platonic Academy. That was of course, until he found that he had stumbled upon the knowledge of the great and legendary Hermes Trismegistus in 1460. As soon as he realized the Greek documents in his possession were non other than the great Corpus Hermeticum and Asclepius, he immediately stopped the translation of Plato’s works in pursuit of this knowledge that had previously eluded him and other collectors in Europe. Cosimo had these books delivered to him by hand, from the actual scholars themselves (Leonardo da Pistoia in this case). Casimo had long been a collector of rare and important books. And his library is regarded to have contained the most extensive collection of of classical and religious works in Europe. Casimo seemed to view this as his ultimate prize of his collection and something that he needed to see before his death. We can see, this was a matter of incredible importance, even to to man who supposedly had everything.
Cosimo was a man whom Pope Pious II described as “master of the country”, and said the following about him,
“Political questions are settled in his house. The man he chooses holds office…He it is who decides peace and war and controls the laws…He is king in everything but name.”
Looks like this was an incredibly important affair, for an incredibly important man, who did humanity a great service by deceiving the church in the most subversive of ways. This man is an incredible hero of history, and this act aided this planet in a monumental service.
The rest as we say is history. But knowing the foundations of the faith, give me a lot more inclination to practice it, because I know that often a lot of these original Gnostic Christian ritualistic were pantheists, who had incredibly well developed systems of magick that not only worked with angels, but Greek and Egyptian Pantheons also, and they weren’t afraid to even drift “far out” and use Hermetic and Pagan teachings as well. Sounds pretty cool to me to be honest.
My Personal Opinion:
I feel like Hermeticism provides a wealth of adept spiritual knowledge in the functioning and mechanics of the universe, thought, and how to use these to change your life (and of course if one brings such understandings into rituals they achieve the true desired effect). And that it seems like authors like this get a bad rep, and lot less popular, because most people don’t know, and can’t handle the original forms of Christianity. Even Cosimo was not lost on the importance of this spiritual knowledge, and placed more importance on it, than the works of the great Plato himself, because this was the real work he wanted to make sure he saw before he died.
I feel so sad that that stupid bitch who wrote “the secret” (#1 Ellison type salesman in the world BTW) looked at all these things like the “Emerald Tablet” and all this hermetic knowledge, and just completely divorced herself from any magick use, when clearly only people who engage in shitloads of magick can harness their minds to get instant and direct results with the material the way she teaches it. To do this is really to throw the baby out with the bath water, and I feel tons of modern people reading books on magick do things like this all the time, and I regard them as charlatans and deceivers.
I feel like there’s a lot I have been able to read out of various hermetic books, without having to mentally sift through what I describe as “bullshit mountain” to get a lot of incredibly valuable information, and I feel like opening each hermetic text has always given me something insightful and powerful to contemplate.
I regard them often as some of the most powerful religious texts at least in how I felt they related to my own gnosis.
I hope you find this little history lesson a little more entertaining and helpful than anything they taught you in school.
Good Luck and Godspeed,
-Frater Apotheosis