/lit/ - Literature

Check out the "Gnostic Bible."

>>16097986
currently reading Elaine page "Gnostic Gospel"

>>16097986
Simon Magnus cultist detected

https://www.nwcatholic.org/spirituality/ask-father/what-are-gnostic-gospels.html

>>16097974
>check link price
AHHHHHHH I'M SORRY /biz/ I SHOULD HAVE LISTENED

This is a post I saved on the argument

Part 1 – Olympus

Platonism is essentially a conglomation of the Mediterranean and Near Eastern mystery traditions, systematized, refined and expounded in a rational whole suitable for the Greek intellectual milleu – the later tradition, known from the time of 20th century academia as "Neoplatonism", was primarily concerned with an exposition of the Unwritten Doctrines of Plato.

In Neoplatonism, there are two primary currents – the meditative mysticism of Plotinus and Porphyry and the Theurgy of Iamblichus and Proclus. There are other Neoplatonists, but these are the most important.

Plotinus was the teacher of Porphyry and gave him the task of compiling his notes into a systematized treatise, which should be read as a defence of Platonism against other schools. Like the Middle Platonists, he borrowed some teachings from the Stoics and Peripatetics.

Iamblichus was the student of Porphyry. He disagreed with their meditative approach and favored a form of ritual magic based on the Hermetic Asclepius and the Chaldean Oracles, which came to be known as Theurgy. He considered Pythagoras a higher authority than Plato and, unlike Plotinus and Porphyry, argued for a complete concord between the teachings of Aristotle and Plato. He formulated an influental cirriculum that began with Aristotle, his Organon in particular, proceeded to twelve dialogues of Plato and culminated in a study of the Chaldean Oracles and Orphism.

Proclus, who came much later, in many ways harmonized the teachings of Iamblichus and Plotinus, but kept a distinct emphasis on Theurgy. Theurgy, as I said, was based on a set of revealed writings known as the Chaldean Oracles, but these only excists in fragments today, most of them stemming from the works of Proclus.

Anyhow, the reading list goes as follows

>Complete Works, Plato
>Isagoge, Porphyry
>Enneads, Plotinus
>Select Works of Porphyry, Thomas Taylor
>Theology of Arithmetic, Pseudo-Iamblichus
>On the Mysteries, Iamblichus
>On the Gods and the Universe, Sallustius
>Elements of Theology, Proclus
>Commentary on the Timaeus, Proclus
>Theology of Plato, Proclus

During the Medieval Age, only a handful of Roman works were avaliable to the Latin West. These were;

>Commentary on the Timaeus, Calcidius
>Commentary on the Dream of Scipio, Macrobius
>Marriage of Philology and Mercury, Martianus Capella

..along with an Arabic paraphrase of Enneads IV-VI going by the name of The Theology of Aristotle and a paraphrase of The Elements of Theology going by the name of Liber De Causis.

Of these, Macrobius is the most worthwhile, as he summarizes the cosmology of the Neoplatonists (some from sources no longer extant) and gives an exposition of Aristotelian physics and Ptolemaic astronomy – in essence, a snapshot of the classical worldview that would dominate until the Scientific Revolution of the Enlightenment. This is absolutely essential if you wish to understand classical esotericism.

Part 2.1 – Titans

The primary accomplishment of the Medieval Arabs, who inherited the labour of the Greeks, was to formulate a sophisticated theory of astral magic – unfortunately, Islamic esotericism is still in it's infantile stage; the Shams Al Marif by Ahmad Al Buni, for example, is virtually unknown among Westerners. Fortunately, we have the most important work avaliable on the theory of astral magic in translation, namely

>On the Stellar Rays, Al Kindi

Which should be read in conjuction with an earlier Neoplatonic work;

>On Prophecy, Dreams and Human Imagination, Synesius

Ioan Couliano speaks about the connection between these two works in his Eros and Magic in the Renaissance and Liana Saif highlights the monumental importance of Al Kindi on European occultism in her Arabic Influences on Early Modern Occult Philosophy.

During the Renaissance, Marsilio Ficino was given the task of translating the works of the Platonists into the Latin tongue by the Medici family. This is the birth of Florentine Platonism, and there are three important luminaries whose influence cannot be ignored – Ficino, who fused Neoplatonism with the astral magic of Al Kindi, Pico Mirandola, who introduced and Christianized the practice of Jewish Cabala, and Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, who made a thourough exposition of the principles of magic by stiching together various works of Renaissance occultists.

>Three Books on Life, Marsilio Ficino
>Syncretism in the West: Pico's 900 Theses, Stephen Farmer
>Three Books of Occult Philosophy, Agrippa

Part 2.1 – The Alchemy of Heresy

There are, however, other strains of thought present during this era. Unlike the Florentine Platonists and their obsession with astrological magic, Nicholas of Cusa was closer to the Neoplatonic and Patristic doctrine of Theosis – that is, deification of the human soul.

Whereas Iamblichus - who first introduced the Chaldean practice of Theurgy to the Platonic current - emphasized the role of "barbarous symbols" in ritual that was only comprehensible to the Gods, Cusanus followed the Christian Neoplatonism of Eriugena and implemented Pythegorean mathematics as occult symbols in the ascent of the soul. His most important work is

>On Learned Ignorance, Nicholas of Cusa

Jasper Hopkins has his entire ouvre availble for free at his website.

The first thinker to take Cusanus seriously was Giordano Bruno, whose doctrines are too complex to get into here – suffice to say, he essentially made a consoltation between the meditative mysticism of Plotinus and the ritual magic of Iamblichus and Proclus. Likewise, he fused Agrippa and Cusanus together. His essential works are

>Cause, Principle and Unity
>Ash Wedensday Supper
>Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast
>The Heroic Frenzies
>On the Composition of Images, Signs and Ideas

Frances Yates' interpretation of him is far too sloppy and general. Instead, I suggest Applied Imagination: Giordano Bruno and the Creation of Magical Images by Michael Storch, availiable for free online.

Now, a quick word on Protestant Illuminism. This was an important movement incredibly influental on Romanticism and the formation of modern occultism. The two best representatives are the alchemists Paracelsus and Jacob Boehme, whose best works are

>Archidoxes of Magic, Paracelsus
>The Key of Jacob Boehme, Adam McLean
>Signature of All Things, Boehme

Adam McLean is the foremost living authority on alchemy. You would do well to check out his website, Levity.

Part 3 – Astrological Sommanbulism

The foundation of modern occultism is found in the works of Franz Anton Mesmer. The Enlightenment had dealt a devestating blow to the doctrines of the oldtimers and it was Mesmer who revived the teachings of Al Kindi through secondhand sources like Paracelsus, with one fatal flaw – he disregarded the Neoplatonic framework completely, which is understandable, since his primary concern was medicine, but unfortunate, since an essential part was lost and sloppily reconstructed by later occultists. His writings can be found in

>Mesmerism: A Translation of the Original Medical and Scientific Writings of F. A. Mesmer, George Bloch

It was, however, Jules Dupotet Sennevoy who pioneered these doctrines and elevated them as THE key to all magical phenomena. An abridged translation of his magnum opus can be found in

>Magnetism and Magic, Jules Dupotet Sennevoy

The teachings of these two individuals came to their culmination in the writings of Eliphas Levi, who is credited with having kickstarted the occult revival of the 19th century. He was influental indeed, but not as original as many give him credit for. In his History of Magic, he praised Sennevoy as an adept of the magical arts and said of Mesmer that "nature had revealed all her secrets to him", so he wasn't particularly secretive about his sources. Rather than reading Levi, I suggest

>History of Magic, Joseph Ennemoser

Which is the clearest exposition of the Mesmeric intepretation of magic. Once you understand this, all facets of modern occultism will become lucidly clear. The Theosophical Enlightenment by Joscelyn Godwin is excellent as a historical source as well.

>>16097986

>>16098422
what the fuck is the point of reading porphyry's Isagoge if you then don't read Aristotle's Categories

Part 4 – The Egyptian Solomon

Whereas these thinkers were primarily concerned with matters divine, there was also a tradition concerned with matters mundane – the Goetic, which takes it name from the Greek Goes, or Shamans, if you will.

It has it's beggining in

>The Greek Magical Papyri, Hans Dieter Betz

And should be supplemented with

>Techniques of Graeco-Egyptian Magic, Stephen Skinner
>The Argo of Magic, Jake Stratton-Kent

..although Dodds argues in his The Greeks and the Irrational that Plato defended a position similar to Shamanism. Either way, the Papyri was composed over several centuries and eventually many of it's techniques appeared in the

>Hygromanteia, Ioannis Marathakis

..which was a precursor, nay, the granddaddy of all subsequent Solomonic grimoires. How this came about is prone to much speculation, but the works of Skinner and Stratton-Kent gives a fine banquet for thought.

The Solomonic Grimoires are concerned with demonic conjuration, from the Latin con jurae – to swear together. The word demon is a Christian bastardization of the Greek daemon. The Greeks, and the Platonists in particular, considered daemons as intermediaries between us and the gods, being of good and bad disposition, each having their own distinct personality and prone to passions like humans; spirits, in other words.

The early Church Fathers however, like Justin Martyr, Origen, Clement of Alexandria and Augustine, considered them differently – they were solely responsible for all evil in the world; in fact, they were the old pagan gods themselfes. As such, the approach to these daemons differs between the Pagan Papyri and the Christian Grimoires. This context is important to keep in mind.

Another influental work is

>The Picatrix

Which is not a cthonic Grimoire like the Papyri and Hygromanteia, but rather deals with the powers of the planets, as does another important grimoire, the Arbatel, found in

>Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy, Pseudo-Agrippa

The Picatrix was an important source for Ficino, Mirandola and Agrippa. The Solomonic tradition has close ties to the Florentine school, as the first mention of many of the demons that would later appear in various grimoires is found in

>On the False Hierachy of Demons, Weyer

Who was a personal student of Agrippa.

The Solomonic tradition took a different expression in the works of John Dee, who felt he had exhausted his knowledge and sought for more in the daemonic realm. In structure, it mirrors the Lesser Key of Solomon and utilizes some material from the Archidoxes of Magic by Paracelsus and the Sworn Book of Honorius. It is a highly complex system. Dee, who had the biggest library in Europe at the time, kept Agrippa's Three Books of Occult Philosophy by the table. His system must be understood in the context of Florentine Platonism. The best material on Dee is

>A True and Faithful Relation, Meric Causabon
>Five Books of Mystery, Joseph Peterson
>Heptarchia Mystica, Robert Turner

>>16097974
Right here
https://historyofphilosophy.net/

>>16098422
>>16098425
>>16098434

>>16098444
check'd

>>16098451
>>16098452
>>16098454
thanks everyone