best books on Hermeticism

Anatomy of the Psyche by Edinger, Alchemy by Von Franz, The Mysterium Lectures by Edinger.

Welcome to the cult.

my diary is pretty good

The Aurora consurgen by von Franz is also p good once you work your way up.

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>>8442011
>>8442005
Thank you very much, looks like I have some reading to do. This topic has always been strange for me, I was not raised in any religious fashion but find myself compelled by these images to a point where it's changed my identity and I don't even know why.

The idea of "the all" is seemingly branded on my brain, any philosophy I encounter goes back to that point, any religious issue turns to the same. I have been somewhere between atheist and agnostic my entire life but somehow this has worked its way into my mind.

I am eager to learn more

also, what are your thoughts on pic related?

>>8442025
I've studied alchemy casually for a few years, but not as thoroughly as I'd like. The picture itself reeks of unity, every little bit of symbolism points to the enantiodromia, the vapor rising in the vessel from the prima materia, both shit and extracted matter. I couldn't breakdown the symbols individually, but I can see the whole drama played out in it.

Its a mandala, an alchemic mandala, but a mandala none the less, and those have been used in damn near every culture to symbolize the soul/totality.

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>>8442036
It's my name now, and as far as i understand you are correct. but I am a hopeless for how little I truly understand and because of your advice I think I move closer to the answers I seek.

I am transfixed on this Image It has become me, to my friends and family, they know me by my birth given name but they know me also by this symbol.

I am familiar with John Dee and his works, he is, as far as I know the originator of the symbol bastardized here >>8442025 buts it seems there is a calling in me beyond this, I cannot discern weather this is religion or superstition, I wonder, what is it that you get out of this pursuit? why were you drawn to it as I am being drawn?

Kybalion is waste of time. Forget what you read in that shitty book. Start with the Greeks including Plotinus, then the Bible, Corpus Hermeticum, Gnostic Gospels and Kabbalah texts (Zohar, Sepher Yetzirah etc.) before you get into later shit. Then look into Ficino, John Dee, Giordano Bruno and Heinrich Khunrath.

>>8442001
>>8442005
>>8442006
>>8442011
>>8442025
>>8442036
>>8442053
>>8442103


of course i am quite ignorant of the whole matter but i think hermeticism is utter shit.
this whole gnostic is so fascinating because it is promising true knowledge blabla. it makes pretends to make sense of it all but it's just a fetish to conceal your inability of cognitive mapping of the non-all/multitude/contingencies of reality. please get lost in it or just read illuminatus! by shea/wilson or il pendolo di foucault by umberto eco.
maybe i start reading the kybalion again but i stopped after 5 pages because i could see right through it. it's as vague as a horoscope has to be and has no effect for reality at all.

>>8442053
Providence, synchronicity, the tao.

I got into it because I wasn't a scholar, a philosopher, or a scientist. And that led me to Campbell who led me to Jung who led me to alchemy. And that's the lens I use. The alchemic process in this view is an older form of psychotherapy. The processes are the same but in different terms. And because the alchemists projected their own psychological developments onto their operations you get an inner experience analogous to most spiritual practices.

Alchemy and Jungian psychology become a place were the rivers meet. The spiritual and religious traditions of the world come together again, the vessel is no longer fractured, we can lay down our arms and share a common goal and a common narrative.

Plus I've seen alchemic symbolism in the dream world before I learned about the shit so my subjective experience has been entwined with this school of thought.

>>8442103
That's a long road you're giving don't you think? That's an entire goddamn life time of studying right there.

>>8442128
Yeah maybe if you read an hour a week

>>8442103
If you read Kybalion you can easily see how it correlates to Corpus Hermeticum and other works....

>>8442144
That Jewish shit you recommended would take at least a year just to have a slightly decent understanding of it.

>>8442036

I am trying to be helpful when I tell you that you are delusional. Art of this type is a memory device and a means of communication. It is basically a lecture in a symbolic language. People would post them in public as a way of communication without putting themselves or the reader at major risk. The symbols all have a particular predetermined meaning. One of the symbols will be misused or be a predetermined starting point,which will either symbolically or by it's misuse indicate the movement.

>>8442128
>>8442147
You could spend a lifetime studying a single author or book if you picked one a good one. If you followed the course, overtime considering each work in the context of the works before as a way of cross referencing and developing an understanding, by the time you got to the later works you would have a secure foundation to build off of. Now this secure foundation may be total nonsense, but the difference between understanding and correctly understanding isn't a gap you are going to close by carefully reading anyways.


>>8442119
Don't psychologize. It may make you feel more secure in your understanding, but that is because it is a leveling which removes the depth of the tradition,

>>8442146
It "correlates", but I could write any old shit and it could "correlate".

>>8442001
Corpus Hermeticum is going the root of western esotericism, along with the Asclepius.

Greek myth, Christianity, Egyptian myth, NeoPlatonism, Gnosticism, and Kabalah are all influences.

Modern texts are A Suggestive Inquiry and Initiation into Hermetics.

Western Esoteric Traditions by Goodrick-Clarke is invaluable.

Crowley
Blavatsky
Mathers
Levi
Regardie
William Blake
Dion Fortune
Rosicrucianism
Etc.

Hermeticism/Gnosticism is a massive interrelated subject.