Archive for the ‘Hermetica’ Category

I am planning to build several different sections to Loewak, as announced earlier. Last weeks I have been busy building a new and hopefully useful/entertaining astrology section for this site. The section focusses on flirting techniques and character descriptions for the various signs, with a section about the Court cards in Tarot and how these rule over the Zodiac as well.

The Astrology section is thus the second subsection of Loewak to open its doors, after I have opened the Dutch Literature section one month ago:

Visit the Astrology section

Visit the Dutch Literature section

I recently called Joshua Ray Stephens book ‘The Moth or the Flame’ a ‘magical’ book. In a mail he asked me if I meant what I was saying, but of course I didn’t define what I meant with ‘magical’. Perhaps I should say ‘magickal’ as some people do, to differentiate from the Disney sort of magic, but I have always found that a somewhat daft way of differentiating. It was started once by Aleister Crowley, I think, a man who was as irritating as he was interesting. When I was a teenager, around 15 or so, I read all books i could get my hands on about the occult. For years and years I exclusively read books about occultism, science fiction and higher physics. At some point I finished most books and kind of distilled what I found interesting: on the ‘occult’ subject those were Crowley, Gurdjieff and Casteneda.

Now, of course that was a teenage fascination. Obsession, even, and I threw away almost all my occult books when I moved to Turkey because I could hardly bear reading them later on anyway. I had long since moved on to philosophy and poetry, and most occult works are simply not well crafted enough to keep my interest. Nonetheless these three people did play a role in the formation of my world-view, and many years of practicing their techniques taught me that the mind can be mastered in ways not taught in conventional sciences. I have practiced a range of techniques for more than 15 years, including asana yoga, hatha yoga, ceremonial magic, astral work, kabbalah, kundalini, castanedian techniques and so on. But ‘occult literature’ never interested me after I passed my 21st birthday. Whatever good these techniques are, the instruction manuals will always be just that, instruction manuals. And instruction manuals ain’t literature.

So, what the ‘mob’ defines as ‘magical books’ ain’t magical books for me. I really detest most ‘occult art’ and ‘magical books’ and for a good reason: good art is always magical, so whomever calls a work ‘magical poetry’ is somewhat insane or doesn’t know what poetry is. Yet, the same isn’t true about books. One simply can’t say that ‘all books are magical’ – that’d be a nonsensical statement.

A truly magical book is a rare phenomenon. It’s the synergy that does the trick: the design, the words, the shape, the colors, the intent put in it. A magical book is a very concentrated expression of someones essence. I feel that Joshua created something like that with ‘The Moth or The Flame’ – it’s a very special work that is very carefully crafted. Maybe we should rather call it a ‘grimoire’, I have always liked that word much better.

I keep practicing my skills and techniques, I spend about one to two hours a day on them. It’s greatly efficient since these skills allow me to completely renew or change my own energy levels. This is an extremely useful skill to have: recently I have been almost in a permanent state of being mind-blown by just about everything that surrounds me. But when I want to read magical books I have no use of ‘occult literature’ and neither do I have any desire for ‘occultists’, frankly: they are a rather irritating and small minded crowd. They are simply unwilling to question their own premises, which is the first requirement of any sort of progress. Besides, all occult forums I have occasionally visited banned me usually within a few days time, which I take as as good a sign of enlightenment as anything else.

Carpocrates has the honour of being one of the more interesting of the heretics. He is viewed as a ’saint’ by those who hold to modern Gnosticism. He is from very early times. Both Irenaeus and Clement of Alexandria have a lot to say against Carpocrates, which would put him likely in the middle second century, part of the main wave of Gnosticism. His was a very logical theology, given his presuppositions. His presuppositions were more Platonic than Christian, and they lead him to an interesting place.

Carpocrates had a theory that involved reincarnation, but in the Carpocratian sense reincarnation was not an evolutionary, soul-growing opportunity such as it is presented in most Hindu and some Buddhist variants of the idea. No, Carpocrates claimed that reincarnation was a punishment:

The soul transmigrates from body to body to make sure it pays every penny of evil to its jailer, the devil, according to the Carpocratians. As you can imagine, this sort of teaching would lead to pretty virulent antinomianism–or to be more precise anomianism and libertinism. They basically had no law other than to experience every possible thing under heaven so that they could pay off the debt of being captive to the devil and the creating angels.

This comes sort of close to Nietzsches ‘Ewige Wiederkehr des Gleichens’, except that Nietzsche claimed that the ultimate purpose of life is to ‘live your life in such way you would wish life would return eternally’. That sort of makes Nietzsche’s stance the exact opposite of the Carpocratian.

However, how exactly would one be able to do such a thing? Carpocrates claimed that ones soul had to experience ‘everything existing under heaven’ to pay off the debt to the jailer, the Demiurg. This. for him, included a wide range of sexual activities and indulgences. By conquering every mode of existence, existence itself becomes unnecessary.

The Carpocratian stance is weird, but interesting. It’s far more credible than the traditional Hindu idea that we grow more and more experienced with every incarnation. I certainly see no evidence of that around me. The whole idea is greatly problematic. It’s way too linear a concept to be somehow applicable to the very non-linear phenomenon of time.

Nietzsches idea, that one should simply live in such way that one would wish life to return eternally, is brilliant in its simplicity. It does not require reincarnation to be true. It tackles eternity at its very core: life already is eternal, here and now. Eternity is all around us. Heaven and hell: all right here. Nietzsche’s stance might be the ultimate hedonistic stance, which is ironic, because Nietzsche, essentially, was very far from being a hedonist himself. On the other hand we see Carpocrates, the ultimate hedonist, paying off his debts to the devil by committing every sin possible, in order not to reincarnate. It does sound like a lame excuse to commit sins, doesn’t it. It’s the ultimate irony of life: the Spartan Philosopher Nietzsche preaches Hedonism at its best and the Hedonist-avant-la-lettre Carpocrates teaches, well, some disguised form of the Original Sin.