/fringe/ - Fringe

Hermeticism 08/09/14 (Sat) 03:11:06 No. 15172

What is Hermeticism?

The Shorter Answer

Hermeticism is an ancient spiritual, philosophical, and magical tradition. It is a path of spiritual growth. Hermeticism takes its name from the God Hermês Trismegistos (Greek, "Thrice-Greatest Hermes"), a Græco-Egyptian form of the great Egyptian God of Wisdom and Magic, Thôth. What the Hermetic Fellowship defines as Hermeticism has also been called the Western Esoteric Tradition, and embraces the Perennial Philosophy or the Ageless Wisdom. Generally, the following can be said to be characteristic of the positive form of Hermeticism advocated by the Hermetic Fellowship.

Hermeticism:

• Considers humanity to be on a spiritual journey to return to a state of unity with the Divine; this is the Great Work of humankind.
• Holds that if we would attain to the Divine, we must aspire to the Divine; spiritual growth cannot be achieved without human effort
• Is eclectic and draws material from sources spanning the entire Western Esoteric Tradition
• Is polytheistic, yet ultimately monotheisitic (i.e., posits a multiplicity of Manifestations of the Divine Which emanate from an ultimate Divine Unity)
• Holds that the Divine is both immanent and transcendent
• Holds that the Universe is Divine and basically good
• Teaches that when we seek the Divine, we may best begin with the Mysteries of Nature
• Encourages spiritual curiosity
• Understands that human beings can access the Subtle Realms through technique and aspiration; to this end, it embraces theurgy, meditation, ritual, and other spiritual and magical practices
• Urges those who seek the Divine to also seek balance in embracing all things
• Is a poetic rather than an ascetic worldview

http://www.hermeticfellowship.org/HFHermeticism.html

08/09/14 (Sat) 03:11:56 No.15173>>15188>>15190

>Is a poetic rather than an ascetic worldview

What does this even mean?

I am ascetic, what could they be implying here by calling it "poetic"?

08/09/14 (Sat) 03:14:53 No.15174>>15175

Want me to copypaste more of the article btw? It's a really beautiful overview of our religion/philosophy.

08/09/14 (Sat) 04:08:55 No.15175

>>15174
Ya

08/09/14 (Sat) 12:37:21 No.15188>>15190

>>15173

My interpretation would be that he's saying that it's not a system which requires severe self deprivation of the practitioner, as some Eastern yogic systems do. Not sure what poetic is supposed to mean, except that a lot of hermetic literature is poetry, or explains things in metaphor.

Ironically, the word 'ascetic' comes from the same etymological root as the greek 'askesis,' which was used by ancient (and some modern) hermetic practitioners to describe their meditations and spiritual practices, even though these practices aren't what we'd think of as 'ascetic' today.

08/09/14 (Sat) 15:55:09 No.15190

File: 1407599709447.jpg (292.1 KB, 360x611, 01_03_hermes.jpg)

>>15173
>>15188
In my understanding - and to my appreciation -
a poetic worldview embraces the beauty of the universe and in all of its glory. It respects the nature and its small details that build up the world around us - and inside us. It is like looking a beautiful work of art and saying, "This is beautiful. Just look at the colors and their placement on the canvas! What a fine work of art!"

Ascetic worldview, on the other hand, might be something akin to Gnosticism, where the Universe is held to be EVIL and and only an illusion (remember the Divine Paradox here!)
I do not share this Gnostic view though I have a lot of respect for those great philosophers and theologians who have embraced this tradition.

Gnosticism indeed is a sister religion to Hermeticism, and we can see the LAW OF POLARITY here, too! Hermeticism, poetic. Gnosticism, ascetic. No?

I am ascetic to some degree in my daily life, but in a moderate Middle Way manner, yet I embrace the poetic worldview because I cannot but marvel the beautiful work that is the Universe.

(I've also seen a dream before where I write and realize this and it brings me a great deja vu. It is beautiful.)

08/09/14 (Sat) 22:23:33 No.15195

>Make yourself grow to immeasurable immensity, outleap all body, outstrip all time, become eternity, and you will understand God. Having conceived that nothing is impossible to you, consider yourself immortal and able to understand everything, all art, all learning, the temper of every living thing. Go higher than every height and lower than every depth. Collect in yourself the sensations of all that has been made, of fire and water, dry and wet; be everything at once, on land, in the sea, in heaven; be not yet born, be in the womb, be young, old, dead, beyond death. And when you have understood all these things at once — times, places, things, qualities, quantities — then you can understand God.

The best paragraph I've ever read in this lifetime.
Thanks OP. I was very poorly informed about Hermeticism, it's great to know that I've been following this path all along