The Kybalion

If you have to ask on 4chan: No.

No it's pretty boring.
If anyone disagrees, I'd love for you to tell me what you got out of it. Of course no one will answer because everyone else here is a fucking moron.

You can could get something out of it if you wanted, but it would be 90% you. If you want to learn about life and spirituality, then think and write about it. Smoke weed for inspo.

>>9671729
It's a good introduction into the occult and hermeticism, but it doesn't explain in depth enough to be super good. You're better off reading the Kybalion as a beginners text, and then hitch hiking on Theosophy or an Eastern Religion until you can walk on your own two feet.

>>9672078
how? i read it. sounded like neoplatonism repackaged to make it sound spooky

>>9672082
It's a hermetic text

As someone who has never gotten into mainstream philosophy, what is Neoplatonism - what is a good site or articles to read on it?

What is 'The One'

I know I can Google, but you should know how hard it is to just jump into something. Im jumping into multiple things right now so a recommendation would be nice

>>9672082
>>9672118
Cont.. I can tell you right now, that my reading of biblical texts, there is a lot of similarity.
The Lord / Yahweh - built from Hebrew for I Am - and imo separate from God (Genesis shows this pretty clearly) is "nous"

>>9672118
neoplatonism is vast, but a really reductive explanation, with my limited knowledge, runs something like this:

>the one is the monad of god, in a very abstract sense
>there are levels of existence emanating from the one
>human existence is one of those levels
>all levels of existence are consistent
>since they are consistent, through initiate understanding we can work our ways up the levels, closer to the emanations and eventually up to god

i think im doing a shit job of explaining this. maybe it's something more like: if we purely understand things at one level, we can understand all things at all levels because all are emanations from the same godhead.

i dont know, you should read the timaeus if you are interested in hermetic stuff either way

>>9671729
Not really. I've observed throughout the years that people who are into the occult are driven by a need for sentimental agitation, for which reason much of the scholarship sucks.

The Kybalion was written by William Walker Atkinson, a proponent of the New Thought movement. It has nothing to do with classical Hermeticism whatsoever, which is based on the fragmentary Corpus Hermetica.

Nearly all occultism after the 19th century - being Spiritualism, Theosophy, Martinism, Rosicrucianism, Golden Dawn, Crowley, Chaos Magick, Jungian Alchemy and so forth - is fundamentally based on Mesmerism.

>>9672118
Neoplatonism is a derogatory term that was coined in the 19th century in order to differentiate the mystical juju of Late Antiquity from the "rational" writings of Plato.

Plato is, of course, just as filled with mystical juju as his followers were, the most important being Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus and Proclus.

The primary concern of Platonism is to actualize our fundamental kinship with the gods by cultivating our soul - with Plotinus and Porphyry through mysticism, with Iamblichus and Proclus through magic.

Speaking from experience of frustration, I recommend reading primary sources only.

Plato > Plotinus > Iamblichus > Proclus

If you want a good introduction, I'd recommend Exhortation to Philosophy by Iamblichus. Have fun.

>>9672151
A lot of that sounds like "as above, so below" / microcosm vs macro

>>9672680
>Crowley's thelema based on mesmerism
It was heavily based on Gnosticism and Jewish mysticism as well as taking inspiration from Egyptian mythology

Same with Chaos magick and the Golden Dawn. I don't think you know what you're taking about

>>9673031
Mesmer revived the Medeival and Renaissance notion of astral causation that was in vogue with the Christian Neoplatonists and Paraselcian doctors. He proposed that the planets emenate rays which forms an invisible substance on our Earth which he called the Magnetic Fluid -- the process of manipulating this fluid was known as Animal Magnetism.

Eliphas Levi, who in his History of Magic wrote that nature had revealed all her secrets to Mesmer, dubbed the Magnetic Fluid the Astral Light, which he considered the sole cause of magic. Levi also praised another Mesmerist, Jules Dupotet Sennevoy, who considered the primary means of manipulating the Magnetic Fluid to be the faculties of imagination and willpower. It is primarily through Levi that Mesmerism became the foundation of modern occultism.

On Crowley in particular, here's the deal. His O.T.O and Thelema was heavily influenced by Paschal Beverly Randolph, a Mesmerist who was an associate of Sennevoy.

In his final days, Crowley recommended a few quintessential works to be studied - among these, everything by Eliphas Levi, of whom he considered himself an incarnation.

Chaos Magick, if you take the IOT and folks like Pete Carroll, was directly inspired by Crowley. If you understand Mesmerism, you'll understand how Chaos Magick is an eccentric offshoot. The History of Magic by Joseph Ennemoser is excellent in this regard.

The Golden Dawn is more peculiar. They had their practical foundation in the Z Documents of MacGregor Mathers, which is actually much closer to the oldschool tradition of Neoplatonic Theurgy, but there are several elements in their other writings which are Mesmeric in nature.

I don't mean Mesmerism as hypnosis by the way -- the latter was coined by James Braid who wanted to explain the oddities of Animal Magnetism away as a mere case of placebo. It was a huge craze in Europe at the time.

In regards to Gnosticism and Judaism, it sounds like you still have a lot of homework to do. I wont go into Gnosticism, but the Kabbalah which was utilized by the occultists of the 19th and 20th century has barely any relation to traditional Judaism -- it has it's origin in Pico Della Mirandola of the Platonic Academy of Florence, who Christianized the Judaic Sephiroth by equaling them with the Nine Angelic Hierachies of Pseudo-Dionysious the Areopagite. Strangely enough, Levi said that the entire Hermetic doctrine is to be found in the writings of Pseudo-Dionysius, who wasn't a Hermeticist by any means, but a Christian Neoplatonist.

The Tree of Life isn't illustrated in either the Zohar or Sepher Yetzirah, but there excists several versions of it which were made much later; the one Levi, the Golden Dawn and Crowley employed was made up by the Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher in the 17th century, who also happened to be one of Mesmers primary sources on Animal Magnetism. Small world, eh.

Do you know who Court de Gebelin and Etteilla is and their relation to the Tarot mythos?

>>9673265
Do you actually read this stuff or just about it? If so, do you practice?
I've written my own ideas and I've done my own practice - I've done little reading but enough to know I haven't come up with anything new

>IoT
The site talks about Gnosticism. It says that there are lower forms, which they refer to as trance, and it says that you can attain it through feeling extreme emotion.

I've done it with pleasure (After all 'there is nothing in goodness above pleasure' - Sefer Yetzirah). I feel intense basically, and it very much feels electromagnetic.
I'm unsure how much of it is me basically hallucinating on serotonin or what, but there is bio-electric magnetism.

If you're actually into this kind of stuff, I'm curious what you've gotten out of it - even just intellectually

>>9673265
Whatever. Don't answer then