STUDY OF THE HERMETIC PHILOSOPHY OF ANCIENT EGYPT AND GREECE

[Dover]

STUDY OF THE HERMETIC PHILOSOPHY OF ANCIENT EGYPT AND GREECE

It is my very great pleasure to make this book available. For those who have eyes to see and ears to hear, this book contains the wisdom of the ages. It is paradoxically (of course) both easy to read and impossible to read. It must be "gotten" and contemplated. Each time you return to it, you will find more, for the eye will see more and the ear will hear more. It is all there from the very beginning. In preparing these pages for the website, I had the great pleasure of reviewing my acquaintance with these laws and their truth. Now let's take a more serious look at Hermes Trismegistus.

-- Nancy R. Fenn

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Metaphysics is the right brain version of physics. Both physics and meta-physics are fields which endeavor to explore and understand how the world was created -- one with the left brain, one with the right.

Anima Mundi

According to a wonderful little book I keep at my bedside called The Kybalion, there are 7 basic laws of the Universe and these are they:

1. Mentalism: The Universe is mental. All is mind.


2. Correspondence: As above, so below.


3. Vibration: Everything is in motion. Nothing is still.


4. Polarity: Everything has its pairs of opposites.


5. Rhythm: The pendulum swing manifests in everything. The measure of the swing to the right is the measure of the swing to the left.


6. Cause and Effect: There are many planes of causation but nothing escapes this law.


7. Gender: Gender manifests on all planes.


Here is an example of each law in action in the everyday world.


1. The Law of Mentalism. Every thing that appears in your world was once a thought you had. When I teach students metaphysics, I ask them to indicate an important event in their life and then to return to the place in time when they planted the seed for this event with a thought. A woman told me she had suffered in poverty for 7 years having foolishly bought a business in the worst part of town. She realized this was because once she had prayed to experience as broad and as deep a life as possible. That was when this seed was planted.


2. The Law of Correspondence. This law teaches us that we can understand the unseen by carefully observing what we can see with our own two eyes. When a woman is about to go out on a date with a new man, I encourage her to look at how he treats the waitress and how he eats his meal. This is the way he will be treating her and having sex with her after his guard is down (should she choose to continue to date him).


3. The Law of Vibration. Everything vibrates. Nothing is still. This Law helps us to understand the essence of things. It is this fine network of vibrations that connects us with every other living thing. You might picture it as an invisible world wide web. It is in tune with the vibrations of the universe that we attract and are attracted to every experience in our life. To use a metaphor, suppose you like country and western music. If you set your radio dial to country and western you will not hear classical or jazz music. If you vibrate at a peaceful level, you will not meet people who are violent.


4. The Law of Polarity. Everything has its opposite. This law helps us to understand the principles of yin and yang. Some energy attracts and some energy repels. One is not better than the other but both exist. I like to think of the astronomical world where one body can capture another by pulling it into its sphere of influence. This principle can be understood in life when we recognize the truth in this saying: If you want him to be more of a man, be more of a woman.


5. The Law of Rhythm. The pendulum swing manifests in everything. The measure of the swing to the left is the measure of the swing to the right. This law operates in life quite visibly with people who are bipolar. One day they're up, the next they're down. For most people, the law is realized when they become very, very happy. The law dictates that next they will be very, very sad. To correct this is simple: To avoid being very unhappy, avoid being very happy.


6. Cause and Effect: There are many planes of causation but nothing escapes this law. The best writing on this law, which is the law of Karma, is found in Emerson's Essay on Compensation. It is available for free download on many internet sites.


7. Gender: Gender manifests on all planes. This law works in our lives by helping us to see that each male has an inner female within him and each female has an inner male. Both are necessary for creation and regeneration. These Laws of the Universe are meta-physical but they are as certain as the law of physics. What goes up must come down. You can be certain of it!

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This is Hermes, the Greek Messenger God, similar to Hermes of the Hermetic Doctrine, the same but not the same. Archetypal Hermes is also conveyed as Hermes Trismegistus, Thrice Blessed Hermes, a different connotation and combined, too, with the monkey god of Egypt, Thoth (or Tehuti). These figures are part of the archetypal gods who gave the gifts of writing and learning to humans, including Prometheus. If you're interested in learning more about symbols like this, please visit the Online Tarot Course and the Hermes Alchemy Page. Hermes Trismegistus figures largely in the mythology of Aleister Crowley and other esoteric writers, although the esoterics don't have a monopoly on him and shouldn't be considered the ultimate authority. I think The Kybalion makes the best use of the Hermes energies.

Most of all the word Hermetic evokes the alchemists. Jungians have done work in recovering the archetypal significance of alchemical symbols, so important in dream interpretation and in understanding the collective unconscious. The best book I can recommend is Marie Louise von Franz's Alchemy: An Introduction for both a scholarly approach and credible interpretations.

Liz Greene has said that the Hermetic Doctrine tends to surface at times of crisis as indeed it has surfaced in the last twenty years around the time of the Millennium. Millennia attract apocalyptic world views and other catastrophic imagings as there is a superstition in the collective that the world will end at millennia. The Y2K phenomenon was an aspect of this projection...cont'd

http://www.bemyastrologer.com/kybalion_three_initiates_introduction.html

[Pallas180]

1. Excellent interesting article. Good book for all of this is

Manly P. Hall's "the Secret Teachings of All Ages" with lots of
explanatory pictures too.

You might find it in used books, but I think it might be hard to find in a regular bookstore..

[Dover]

4. Yes, highly recommended.........and some of it is available online

http://www.sacred-texts.com/eso/sta/sta08.htm

The book by Manly P. Hall has been reproduced and is available. Just do a google search for it.

And this is a great metaphysical book reference site too:

http://www.sacredscience.com/store/commerce.cgi?page=MetaSciList.htm

[KittyWampus]

2. Paul Foster Case Was Presumably One Of The "Writers" Of The Kybalion

he was one of the Three Initiates.

His work on the Tarot is unparalleled and a heck of a lot more practical in the esoteric sense.

The study group he founded, and of which I'm a member, is Builders of the Adytum www.bota.org

[Dover]

5. Thanks for the info and the link.

I remember, now, you mentioning your studies with the Builders of the Adytum. So all this must be very familiar.

[Dover]

3. The modern vs. the ancient conception of Time

From the book, Ancient Future (pgs. 53-54):

Just as the reader may create a mental universe of her own, so the All creates universes in its mentality. The major difference between the two processes is that the human universe is the mental creation of a finite mind, whereas that of the All is the creation of an infinite mind. Therefore, that which is accepted to be the universe is just one mental creation of the All: "The All creates in its Infinite Mind countless Universes, which exist for eons of time - and yet, to the All, the creation, development, decline and death of a million Universes is as the time of the twinkling of an eye." Creation does not take place within time; rather, time is an effect of creation.

This conception of time would, to Western culture, be considered a spatiotemporal impossibility. But the ancient Hermetists held that time is a mere illusion, subject to spatial manipulation by the wise who understood its inconstancy. But in order to grasp the dynamic mechanism within which the All creates, it is imperative to explore the concept of time and how it manifests itself in Western civilization. the misunderstanding of time as linear is directly related to the inability to understand the divine. Dr. Kamau Johnson, a Howard University psychologist who has done extensive research into human perceptions of time, points out,

To the surprise of many, the sense of linear time presently experienced in the Euro-Americas has not always been the reigning orientation of time. According to Egyptian mythology, Thoth (Hermes)...was the divider and measurer of time...by observing successive patterns in nature, the Eqyptians came to perceive time as cyclic. The sun, moon, and seasons returned with unfailing patterns and periodicity. as did their observations of the planets. So the concept of a cyclic worldview reflected the reliance on natural cycles...clever devices were designed to measure cyclic time. Sundials and other such devices, reflected that a cyclic time was intrinsic to nature.

Johnson identifies a pivotal shift in the perception of time analysis when "in the mid-1600's, a Dutch scientist, Christian Huygens, invented the pendulum clock, providing...its own recurring cycles independent of nature. This orientation was embraced by the western world...and became firmly ingrained in Euro-American culture. Reference to time became rooted in concepts of hours, minutes, and seconds...Today, it is assumed that time flows rigidly from past, present to future. Languages such as English are designed to describe a linear world...the tenses of English verbs indicate a rigid linear worldview. It is thus difficult to express non-linear...notions in our everyday language.

Language, specifically descriptive or discursive language, is linear and consecutive. Descriptive or discursive languages cannot begin to capture or expound the simplist experience without depriving it of the essence that gives it life. Therefore, to try and use such a linear device to understand the All, is nothing short of impossible.

[Cleita]

6. Kick

:kick:

[Dover]

7. Website: HERMETIC PHILOSOPHY & THE MYSTERY OF BEING

Just came across this site, which looks interesting...so thought I'd attach it to this old thread:

HERMETIC PHILOSOPHY & THE MYSTERY OF BEING
http://www.plotinus.com/

Topics covered:

1 - connection between Ego - Soul - Spirit -
2 - Spiritual awakening - gnosis - unfolding the inner process -
3 - Difference between Psyche and Soul -
4 - Pilgrimages and awakening of the sacred Fire and Light Within - 5 - Duality, dualism, versus wholeness -
6 - Dark Night of the Soul -
7 - Divine guidance and esoteric knowledge -
8 - Symbols, archetypes and intuition -
9 - Mythology, myths, ancient mysteries, imagination and initiation -10 - Divine attributes of Love, Wisdom, Will -
11 - Gods and goddesses and their symbolic importance in the inner process -
12 - Philosophy of Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, Plotinus, Neo-Platonism -
13 - Buddha, Christ and Perfect Models -
14 - Mystery of the Soul -
15 - Higher aspects of Contemplation, Meditation and Reflection - 16 - Dreams and the Language of the Soul -
17 - The sixth and seventh senses -
18 - Androgynous Being and the meaning of Janus -
19 - Higher levels of Consciousness and the Celestial Hierarchies - 20 - Ego or Self consciousness "I am me" versus Cosmic Consciousness -
21 - Absolute Consciousness and "Impersonal Being"-
22 - What is Soul Consciousness? -
23 - What is the Daemon/Daimon in Ancient Greek Mysteries -
24 - Esoteric and Kabalistic Meditations & Exercises -
25 - Spiritual Psychology and Psychosynthesis Exercises -
26 - Hermetic Exercises and Meditations -
27 - Search Engines -
28 - Dzogchen - Buddhism -
29 - Zhine Tibetan Dream Yoga -
30 - Advaita -Hinduism -
31 - Raymond Bernard -
32 - Rencontres avec l'Insolite
33 - Les Maisons Secrètes de la Rose-Croix -
34 - Wei Wu Wei -
35 - Taoism -
36 - Hsin-Hsin Ming -
37 - Zen - Ramesh Balsekar -
38 - Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj -
39 Ramana Maharshi