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Three Religions Meme
The Holy Text of Personal Spiritual Experience
The Holy Text of Personal Spiritual Experience
You are currently browsing comments. If you would like to return to the full story, you can read the full entry here: “Three Religions Meme”.
Thank you John for the “religions” and the tag. This is all new ground for me, so I hope my response on Tangentville is appropriate.
I was once interested in Gnostic Hermeticism. (Is that redundant? Like saying Christian Lutheranism?) I tried to find some online resources or some books to read, but had difficulty.
Do you have any books that you’d recommend?
Hello Kay,
Hermeticism and Gnosticism are actually two different things, although those who practice one or the other sometimes draw inspiration from both. Hermeticism came first – it is a blend of Greek philosophy, Egyptian religion, and numerous other sources that gave rise to a magical psuedo-religious philosophy. It’s rise is mostly thanks to the conquests of Alexander the Great and the Roman Empire. Gnosticism draws on Hermetic philosophy, but is theologically more Christian than Pagan. The two can be easily confused, due to the fact that they each borrowed so often from the other. Both were driven underground by the Catholic Church soon after its rise to power in Europe. These underground traditions would eventually co-mingle with the northern European pagan traditions (Celtic, Norse, etc.) and Jewish Mysticism (Qabalah) which were also driven underground, to give rise to Occultism.
In terms of books & resources regarding Hermeticism, I could recommend volumes… but I would most likely lose you if I don’t stop for a moment and ask you to clarify what you are looking for… There is a lot of information out there to be had, but not a lot of it will make sense unless you know what you are looking at. I’ll e-mail you to further this discussion…
Namaste.
To start I think I’d like a book that discusses an overall philosophy or view of reality. You know, the “Why are we here?” type questions.
I look forward to your email.
Though discussing it here might be of interest to various lurkers. You never know who you might help.
Either way, I’m good.
Hello Kay,
Well, if you think it might help some lurkers…
What I would ask is, how “original” did you want your Hermeticism? The most modern version of Hermeticism is The Golden Dawn and its teachings… I suggest “The Essential Golden Dawn” by Chic and Sandra Cicero. However, if you wanted to go further back into time, I would suggest checking out the Kybalion – which is public domain, so you should be able to find it online. I wouldn’t call the Kybalion beginner friendly, but it is just about as authentic and complete as you can get.
Regarding Gnosticism, I will admit I am not as well read as I would like to be. I know that Willis Barnstone edited a large number of Gnostic and Christian Apocrypha together to make “The Other Bible”… much of which I think you would be interested in… But besides that, I’m not so keen on Gnosticism myself. I would strongly recommend seeking out an online message board for Gnostics and asking what they suggest for beginners. You can tell that something is “beginner” material if someone else pipes up and says that there is too little substance – that’s just another way of saying “I already know this stuff…”
I hope that helps, Kay.
Namaste.
Thanks John.
I’m not sure if I’m so much interested in Gnosticism as I am in Christian and Jewish esoterica. I’m such a non-dualist, I don’t imagine I’d be a good fit within Gnosticism proper.
I’ll definitely check out The Essential Golden Dawn and see if any of it jumps out at me.
I dipped a toe into Qabalah waters a few years back, but instantly encountered the “red string” stuff. I was put off by that, and didn’t know which way to turn. I didn’t know what was worthwhile and what was Madonna-esque, Hollywood Qabalah.
I really enjoyed God is a Verb, but can’t remember now if the Rabbi really got into Qabalah or not.
I really must check out The Chicken Qabalah! I’ve heard such wonderful things!
[...] Posted in Books, Ontology by Kay on December 22, 2009 I’m having a nice conversation with John over at The Pageless Book about Jewish and Christian esoterica. In that conversation he recommended a couple of books which I [...]
[...] having a nice conversation with John over at The Pageless Book about Jewish and Christian esoterica. In that conversation he recommended a couple of books which I [...]