Esotericism: Counter-Normativity & the Historical Imagination with Dr Wouter J Hanegraaff

Our guest this morning is Professor Voucher J. Hanigraph. Dr. Hanograph is professor of the history of hermetic philosophy and related currents at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. Voucher Hanograph is considered one of the world's foremost experts in the study of esotericism. He has edited and authored multiple scholarly articles, journals, and books, including esotericism and the academy and the his latest volume, esotericism and western culture, counterormativity and rejected knowledge. Dr. Hanograph, a warm welcome to the program. >> Oh, thank you very much, Jason. Glad to be here. >> Absolutely. So the current book uh that you just released revision of the 2013 release western esotericism a guide for the perplexed um many things have changed um of course esotericism is always an elusive proteian concept to define um but also this conception of the west. So, can you explain some of the changes you made with the book? Um, and also how the study of esotericism since you last wrote um guide for the perplexed um you know how this study of esotericism has changed into the many hermeneutical models uh not least of which is the discursive turn. >> Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you for those question. There's a lot to unpack but I'll try to keep it short. Um so, yeah. Uh so yes I published this textbook 20 in 2013 uh as you said uh guide for the perplexed with Bloomsbury uh that was just in the slipstream of my book esotericism in western culture that was published a year earlier. So it's sort of um built upon those ideas but made it accessible in a more um yeah well in a more readable uh fashion maybe hopefully. Um but of course after 2013 many things have changed and the field of esotericism is uh developing very rapidly. Uh new generation is coming up that has new ideas, different perspectives and of course so I had to uh take all of that into account and uh try to see uh yeah that the book remains uh up to date and relevant for a new generation of readers. Um so that's what I try to do and there are many issues. Um, one thing that you mentioned just briefly just now um has to do with what I call the discursive term. And this is a bit of a technical part of the book. I'm not sure how deeply we should go into it but um um what you can say I think is that over the past 1015 years increasingly scholars in the study of religion are using uh discursive models often uh have having to do with uh things like post structuralism Michelle Fuko and other kind of related ideas um which really are all about uh how discourse is interrelated with power uh this is very important to new development which uh which leads to new ways of approaching uh topics like esotericism. So I take that very seriously but I also have um some critical uh yeah remarks about it. So I talk about this discursive turn as as as referring to this kind of increasing emphasis on uh saying that everything is about the discourse and the power of discourse and I push back against that a little bit because I think that discourse is important but it's not the only thing and certainly when you uh when you look at for instance at the hermetic literature that I've been studying uh this is very much about uh personal individual religious experiences that are very hard to put into words and they are very often about practices and so practice and experience are pre are precisely the two dimensions that are hard to grasp in terms of discourse. Uh so I think if you have an completely discursive approach to esotericism there's a big risk of missing the experiential and the practical sides of things. So that's that's one thing. Now then I then I have all kind of ideas here about the question of whether whether there is anything um uh that well let me put it this way whether let me put it differently whether discourse whether language discourse um is the only uh access we have to reality or whether there are other ways of access to reality and I think that there are other ways of access to reality there's a kind of tendency of saying that it's all about discourse language discourse the only thing that we can talk about in scholarship and I don't think so I think we can also look at other dimensions so that is what that's about and um the other aspect that you mentioned is the west western culture thing and this is important uh too because um uh well increasingly over the last 1015 years there has been increasing criticism for very good reasons of uh our traditional concept of western concepts of western culture of the west. Um and I think these critiques are uh very important because um well there is a lot of uh push back against arrogant ideas about western superiority and those kind of things imperialism and and uh unrelated things. Um so what I'm actually doing in the new book is um exploring a new understanding of western culture which pushes back against those uh traditional old-fashioned u eurosentric notions. Um I've been inspired here by the work of a friend of mine in America um met Matthew Melvin Kushki an Islam specialist uh who's doing fantastic work and we agree about this idea that we have to think about uh western culture in a new way what we call the greater west and the key element here is that uh that traditional eurosentric uh notions of the west which still the dominant notions I think for most people are based upon this idea of an um so-called Judeo-Christian uh tradition in western culture which which supposedly is central combined with rationalism and science coming from ancient Greece to put it in one sentence and um I think we are pushing back against that first of all because this notion of Greek rationality and Greek science is one-sided uh there are many many other things that come from ancient Greece and we can talk about it later. So I think that esotericism in a broad sense is deeply informed by all kind of uh notions that come from the ancient world that are not just rational in our sense or scientific in our modern sense and also by um ideas that are coming not from Greece but for instance from Egypt and of course Egypt was central to the hermetic literature. So that's one reason to broaden this whole idea of western culture. And the second reason has to do with this notion of a Judeo-Christian tradition that is supposedly central to western culture. This is actually the argument that you find in many farright uh and generally right-wing circles nowadays that western culture is Judeo-Christian. And the the idea behind this is that it is not Islamic because Islam is not western. Well, Matthew Melvin Kushki and I make a very different argument and we are saying no, if you want to really explore western culture in all its diversity, you have to include um uh Islamic culture completely utterly uh as an part of the same cultural sphere. If you cut it out, then you're amputating uh the history of western culture. Uh so this leads to a notion of of the greater west which means the entire traditions that come out of Hellenism um of hellistic of Hellenistic culture. So not as Greek but also for instance Egyptian and uh which includes fully not just Jewish and Christian but also Islamic uh traditions and then of course the interaction between all the Jesus traditions through history. So that is that that's what we're doing and and final maybe a point before because I keep talking I so you have to stop me when I go on that too long but uh but the final aspect of this is that uh already in my previous work also in the guide for the perplexed and satis in um in the academy I um talked about an a kind of an a polyical discourse that has been going on in western culture especially in Protestantism. and even strongly in the enlightenment which basically defines the identity of what it sees as truly western culture in terms of Protestant ideas of belief and faith uh biblical faith and in terms of rationality and modern science. Um and nowadays in a new book I uh have uh invented a new term for this uh to talk about the same pro uh process and that I call it uh uh internal euroentrism and that's a term that I find important now internal euroentrism because it mean this means that actually these narrow-minded arrogant ideas of western culture that I just criticized um are basically ways of um purifying uh the complexity of western culture of everything that is seen as alien as not acceptable superstition, magic, idolatry and so on and so forth. So this is a kind of an discourse that actually tried to um insist on what according to its defenders was central to western culture only those things rationality Jewish and Christian culture etc. that is central to western culture and Islamic cult cultures and irrationality and magic and so on and so forth are not central to western culture and have to be uh marginalized. So that's what I call internal euroentrism. And what I find very important about this and what I actually find exciting to be honest is that uh I'm con increasingly convinced that this internal euroentric ideology because it is an ideology um has become the template for um the externalization of internal euroentrism which means that these European and western patterns of exclusion have been used to uh marginalize and vanquish and suppress and eventually to exterminate uh superstitious magical idolatrous and related uh cultures throughout the world. And this is a big deal because uh in the whole colonial enterprise, the whole way of subjugating other cultures like in Peru and Mexico and many other countries all over the world, basically the battle was always against the same things. a clause against magic, against astrology, against paganism in a negative sense, against superstition and so on so forth. This had this had to be exterminated and the extermination and the suppression of so-called rejected knowledge because all of this stuff is rejected knowledge. The extermination of it actually means the extermination of people and cultures. So um this these are black pages in the history of western culture and um so I think that by making this argument uh you can show that the exclusion of so-called esoteric traditions has rejected knowledge from normative accounts of western culture became the template for then cleaning the rest of the world of superstition and magic and esotericism. and and those kind of things. And that's a big deal that is actually at the heart and at the core of the kind of um imperialist history of western culture that has tried to impose its own ideas on the rest of the world and I find that very important. So that is very recent in the book and that's also my way of showing that esotericism is not just an topic for specialists but it has large implications uh for much larger questions. >> No, I think they're great adjustments to the the entire conception of of your work. I think that something very similar is going on in uh another topic that this show focuses focuses on heavily the classics. Um there is a tendency by the same kind of actors, these uh almost kind of like white supremacist eurosentric uh western civilization people to latch on to these concepts in the Greek and Roman um thought world and to um add their own projections to it. And we have classicists like Curtis Doer who are kind of pushing back against that. Jackie Murray who is bringing in the concept of race and blackness into the discussion about antiquity. I think that your point about Islam and the importance of bringing that the Muslim world back into the picture of this uh pick of this uh otherwise colonialist um in terms of its foundations uh approach to western civilization or western culture is very important. I had a discussion with uh an expert on the Muslim world uh Michael Cook and he emphasizes just how important Islam was for the spreading of uh Aristotle and these uh otherwise what would have been lost writings for western culture. So, um, yeah, you ignore I think there's a, um, I'm not sure if it's the tendency just ingrained within the approach, but there I do sense a lot of Islamophobia. And what I want to try to do this year, for the rest of the year, is kind of change that and bring it back into the picture as well. So yeah, I com I commend you for making those changes with your work because it does it leads to a monstrification and a dehumanization of um the other when you other people like this. Um so >> maybe yeah and maybe let me just say yeah that um this is this is something that I vaguely felt and intuited uh let's say it 10 or 12 years ago but it wasn't clear to me. So this is really something that has really become clear to me over the last decade how important that is and it has to do with also with general developments in the general culture as we see all around us. Yeah. Sorry to interrupt but yeah no no feel free like like I said this is just a general discourse. Um but you you you've actually laid the seeds in that introduction to a lot of what we're going to talk about today. So not least of which is the concept of uh the the important concepts of rejected knowledge and the historical imagination. Uh these are key aspects of your thought I feel. Um so I'd like to explore them for a bit. Um and let's start with uh rejected knowledge. And before we get into that I want to give a big shout out to Stephanie Shay of Rejected Religion who is watching right now from work. >> Thank you Stephanie for all your Yeah. all your great work. Um it's appreciated here. Everybody go check out her Patreon. Um but let's start with yeah and the concept rejected religion comes from this concept that you have of rejected knowledge. So can you go a bit into this term um also is it a definition itself of esotericism and if not what do you mean by rejected knowledge? >> Right. Right. No thank you for asking that because it is often misunderstood. Uh first first of all rejected knowledge for me is not a definition of esotericism. It's really not. Um and one way I a bit maybe a bit of funny way of uh saying that is that uh when people think that um that rejected knowledge is a definition of esotericism then they make an mistake that is similar to the mistake of saying well if cats are animals then animals are cats. Well cats are animals right? But this you cannot turn it around and say that animals are cats. And in the same way, esotericism is rejected knowledge. But it doesn't mean that all kinds of rejected knowledge are esotericism. So that's that's uh no. So it's not a definition. Um what I'm doing is I'm trying to give an description of how certain traditions have been excluded, marginalized, uh suppressed and so on in the course of western culture. And this has to do with the cumulative process of an um yeah of a kind of anical discourse um that I already referred to earlier in the first part of this talk. So this whole cumulative cumulative process of um um what I call internal euroentrism which basically is another word other way of uh talking about the process in which certain traditions get marginalized gets excluded and so on in the interest of um showing what according to these people western culture is really all about or should be really all about and that is monotheist ic monotheism without Islam and rational and scientific etc. And so and then this feeds naturally into this idea of the historical imagination because uh once you think like that then you start to imagine western culture like that and the history of western culture like that and then you get what I refer to uh in my work as um as Neimo history. And so this term medimo history uh is taken from Jean Aman and famous German um specialist of ancient Egyptian culture fantastic scholar somebody who has been a big influence on my work and on my thinking and um he makes a very simple point about Egypt in this famous book by him Moses the Egyptian it's very simple he says what do we know about the historical Moses uh who has set up origin of all the nar narrative of Jewish history, uh, Judaism and so on. Moses, it all begins with Moses and the and the, um, who leads the people out of Egypt and so on and so forth. Uh, well, historically we know nothing about Moses. Uh, we have not a shred of historical evidence that Moses lived, that he existed. Um, so historically there is no Moses. Uh, but uh, that does not mean that Moses is unimportant. On the contrary, uh what we are dealing with is the minimo historical Moses. The Moses of memory of cultural memory, the Moses of the cultural imagination. Um so the picture of Moses as depicted of course in the book of Exodus and so on has become an central um part of the western imagination. um the imagination of um of how in this case the Jewish people gets liberated out of the darkness of Egypt. So there you have the opposition also Egypt as the land of darkness and then he in this case Judaism as the as the people that gets uh that is well created basically by the liberation story of how Moses leads them out of the bondage of Egypt. So you have an opposition here between good and bad. So, so, so how this story is of course Moses and the Jewish people are on the good side and the Egyptians on the bad side. And um so Egypt is the loser here in this story. Um and the same case goes also for another side of Egypt which is the the Egypt of uh magic and superstition and other terms terms like those idolatry. So Egypt as imagined as the country of idolatrous warship which again was seen as bad from an normative uh rational and scientific perspective eventually. So so in both sides so both from the rational side and from the monotheistic side Egypt is on the wrong side is written out of the story or is being being put in a very negative light. Well, this leads to um one-sided um and distorted pictures of the complexity of western culture which you can only understand if you actually include Egypt and its traditions into the story. Um so here we say have a similar kind of story as the ex the exclusion of Islam leads to an amputated for uh story of western culture. In a similar way, the exclusion of Egypt and its traditions leads to an amputated view of western culture. So what is my work all about? It's all about um writing all these traditions back into the story. And this means that the old minimal historical narratives um that have yeah become fundamental for this internal euroentric narrative have to be rewritten. Uh they are uh not convincing. they uh lead to um to misleading uh views of western culture. So, so the whole story is one of of reconstructing the west, reconstructing western culture. And as you can understand, of course, this is an third way in between the polarization that we usually see in this debates. On the one hand, people are defending Western culture. You see this a lot right now in all kind of right-wing and farright movements defending the western culture which means for them Jewish and Christian or a kind of Judeo-Christian culture as they understand it very often and on the other hand the people who say no we have to get rid of western culture altogether because western culture is bad and imperialistic and so on. Well, I I advocate a third way. Uh neither embracing it nor rejecting it, but reconstructing it and uh reconstructing it not on the basis of some ideology, but on the basis of um convincing historical empirical knowledge that has been excluded from the picture. So, and that's this exclusion of all this stuff is simply you can demonstrate it historically. It's not an it's not an idea. It is impossible to deny once you look at it carefully. So yeah, this is for me the way to find an solution out of this polarized to the debates that we are witnessing right now. >> Absolutely. It really all of these stories have to be retold and and these elements reintegrated into the discussion. uh otherwise um like take for instance the um late antique uh conception of Egypt and the Greco Roman imagination if you don't take native demonic conceptions of that that culture back in uh back into consideration then it's just all uh interpret the understanding of Egypt as this exoticized other in the uh Greco Roman imagination But um I believe that this concept of the historical imagination that you um focus on is really important because it it does tend to break down this reception and point out the um at the end of the day story story worlds that people these poetic story worlds that people create about their perspective on things whether it's the enlightenment or whether it's this Platonic orientalism uh that was going on in the ren Renaissance and uh even earlier with the primordial conceptions of history and the culture hero of Hermes to these uh neoplatonic thinkers and theists. We'll get into that of course in the second half of the discussion. But it really is important because as we know from uh a lot of great work being done by Hugo Lunha Lunhow and uh Ivon Marosnikov among others about the optic millia of he geography and apocryphal axe literature. there is a story world kind of being created and the reception of memory is extremely important um in all of these groups. So um you talk a lot about that and a very wonderful article about uh called religion and the historical imagination that's a big uh favorite of mine. Um so um if you want to move on to the counternormativity conception because this is a rather new conception or if you had any further thoughts on the historical imagination before we moved on um feel free um to interrupt me but uh >> other than that we can go on to the counter uh normativity concept. >> No I think I've covered the earlier part I I I can't think of something to add there. No, the counterormativity that's a new concept. So it's in the subtitle of the new book which is called countermativity and rejected knowledge and um yeah this is something that I that came to my mind basically for well came to my mind it's a new term that I've well not invented it is being used sometimes in some circles but it's marginal people often use uh the words anti-normativity but counternormativity has not really been theorized yet so that is what I'm trying to do now. So, um, counterormativity. Uh, I was partly inspired, uh, for this concept by the work of an friend of mine and a colleague, uh, Jeff Kriel, the university at of of Rice College in um, in Houston. >> Jeff has this concept of the the impossible, which is similar, but you have your conception is a little bit different. So, >> I'd love to hear about that. >> Right. the impossible. Uh yeah, that's and so I've been thinking a lot about it and um Jeff is a very different kind of scholar for me. So we are sort of compliment each other. We talk a lot and we learn from each other. And um and another guy who inspired me here was um Eric Davis who's written an interesting book called High Weirdness. And thirdly, there is all these kind of kind of traditions that let's say uh have to do with queer theory and related kind of topics and all these things are have a lot of thing in common and at least in my mind uh which I try to formulate in by means of the term countermativity. So what does it mean? Very simple. Um so what I'm arguing is this um I'm questioning uh our concept of normality. First of all, so we are living in a world uh we are used to it and we think this normal, right? The world in which we find ourselves normal. Uh but very often things that we consider normal are actually only normal to us because we have gotten used to it. And uh underneath them very often are normativities. So what we call normal is often the reflection of hidden normative assumptions. um they become hidden because uh well what is normal is normal and you don't have to question it. But if you look behind the veneer so to speak of normality then very often you find that behind this are uh normativities. And one very simple example to explain this is just not very long ago. Um it was very common to find book titles about the history the the the religions of the world. Uh for instance a famous book by Houston Smith called the religious of man. Right. and and we often have this the religions of man or the the philosophies of man etc. That's an example of uh normativity and normality because we used to find it very normal to talk about humanity in generally as men the religious of men but of course nowadays we have become a bit more sensitive to the fact that well what about women. Um so uh the normality of assuming that humanity means man is nowadays questioned for very good reasons because man uh does not run the show all alone. There are women as well. Uh so um so this is one example of uh a normality talking about man that is actually uh behind which is actually a normative uh idea about in this case the superiority of men over women and u so that's just one example that's a very simple example and there are many other examples of hidden normativity so what I'm doing is uh in this book is trying to ask Okay. Um, we look around us, we're living in a world, we are used to it because we live in it every day and we find it normal. But I think it's a very healthy um attitude to question uh the normality of what we have come to consider normal and to ask what kind of innormativities are actually at work behind it. Um so for instance um you have all kind of um phenomena that are being reported by people that do not fit the normal and normative picture of the world that is being promoted by our uh fundamental institutions like schools and universities etc. So for instance um think about people who hear voices in their head. Uh this is one example. Well, of course, Socrates uh was hearing a voice in his head, the donimmonial uh which was quite important to him. Nowadays, if you if somebody says I hear voices, then people think, "Oh, well, it must be crazy." Uh so you don't say that. But actually uh it turns out that surprising numbers of people hear voices in their heads. They are this is the nonclinical uh you know population of the world. uh there's an large percentage. Many people hear voices. They're not crazy. Uh there's nothing wrong with them. They just hear those voices. So um that's another example. So that's an example of what I c called counternormality. And counternormality is maybe a somewhat more sophisticated way of talking about stuff that we consider weird weirdness. So that is where Eric Davis comes in with his idea of weirdness. So when I say I hear voices in my head, then people think that's weird, right? If you if you see visions of angels or demons, then you think that's weird. If you claim that you have had paranormal experiences, that's weird and so on and so forth. That's all weird stuff. Uh that's the kind of colloquial way of talking about it. But uh I pre I uh propose to talk about it in terms of counternality. And with this I mean simply that uh once a certain normativity becomes normalized then necessarily it excludes all kind of things that are not supposed to be there and which are not supposed to be normal. Any kind of normality creates its own counterparty. It's its own countermality. Uh, for instance, in our world, uh, the kind of stuff that, uh, Jeff Kriel talks about, uh, the weird stuff, things that are supposed to be impossible, the impossible, well, that I refer to as countermality. And here again, uh, my uh, impulse in my program is really to uh, bring back in all the kind of stuff that we have tended to exclude. So in a way you might almost say that counter normality is another form of rejected knowledge. So this is all the kind of stuff that we tend not to talk about. If we experience such things we tend not to talk about them. Yeah. Because we're afraid of what people will say. They will think that we are crazy etc etc. But actually empirically based upon the evidence based upon source evidence etc. This stuff is all over the place. People hear voices, people see visions, they see angels, they have weird experiences. Um, so I think that uh if you just act as if those things are not there and are not being experienced, you are again you're creating a narrowed uh amputated view of reality. So I want to take this stuff seriously and bring it back to the table like Jeff Kle does. >> Absolutely. And and I I think that adding on to that just in terms not only in terms of the anomalous experiences that Krele really explores with his archives of the impossible in his work on the superhumanities. I really think that just getting back to the conception of counternality as a nice tool for exploring esotericism is achen to the importance of things like queer theory. And you have a I just want to say a verifiable a ver veritable rock star there at the uh uh hermetic center for hermetic currents and Brennan Catel who does wonderful work on monster theory and queer theory to read these things against the grain and give voices that were silenced a new voice and and reintegrating them into the discourse. I think that's extremely important. Um I think that >> may I say may I say Jason that Brandon was actually um one of the voices that influenced me in developing this idea. So so I I partly owe it to Brandon that I have this idea of counterity. So uh >> yes yes big big big fan of uh her work. Um and uh I'm actually taking her class on Lilith right now uh for morbid anatomy. It's it's fantastic. Um but otherwise, yeah, I think that it's important because I think that um what you say is key when we uh what we consider normal is not necessarily the way things are onlogically or the way that things are. It's just something that's been culturally conditioned. I think that it's always important to especially for an not only a social historical reading of these texts and these ideas, but also from an empathetic standpoint to always try to read against the grain where possible because otherwise then you end up this and sorry voucher I'm going to get political here but otherwise you're going to end up uh uh railing against the woke halt from your uh point of view of privilege. as as a male who doesn't understand what it's like to be a black person or or a female or a gay person in this world and uh you know it's it's important to reintegrate these voices or a slave that that's another thing that's really important when we study antiquity right the importance and ubiquity of slaves and the creation of these texts and the everyday realities of making this economy and this world run it's um there's a lot of great work going on in religious studies on that and in classics um so yeah Great concepts. I love the counterormativity. I'm a I've always been a weird person. So I always like to look at look at it from the side of the losers so to speak as you say, you know, yeah. >> Yeah. And that's the whole thing, you know, about weirdness. I mean, a study of esotericism, this is well known for decades now at conferences, etc., you know, people, you know, colloquially tell each other that's what we're doing. We're doing the weird stuff, right? We are studying the weird stuff. That's how we talk about it. And so I think it's important to theorize the weird stuff and to make clear what's actually going on there. So that is what it's all about. Yeah, I totally agree. And also, you know, with respect to what you said earlier, um my big advocacy here is for dialogue and understanding and uh transcending these uh narrow polarities and ideological warfare. I mean we have to understand the way that other people think uh you know instead of just entrench ourselves into um some kind of battle line against another battle line. So that's also part of part of the work. Yeah. >> Yeah. As as Stephanie Shay would say we are the weirdos mister you know from the craft you know that's what she's like I study weird stuff. So that's you know I'm a weirdo myself. So uh let's I want to focus this next uh portion of the talk uh the remainder of the talk actually um on your work on hermitism uh which is basically the east resistance of of your thought. I mean um what's really interesting about hermitism is that um as you mentioned earlier in terms of this the the discursive turn and the discursive language of academia and it inability to and the con uh the contradiction of of studying something like the hermetica which is kind of talking about a noetic poetry and and the discursive language of academia always consistently defies >> um consistently does not um kind of hits the wall. So let's kind of talk about this uh way of immortality. Um in your monograph on hermetic pidea which is a classic I just want to say um hermetic spirituality and the historical imagination um you kind of go through this uh hermetic pidea uh you talk about a number of things uh you emphasize that not only was there hermetic community uh this is contrary to people like fuigiier you know earlier in the 20th century who said that it's this is all just like creative fiction in a way Um but also along with somebody like Christian Bull you say that there was not only a community but there was um kind of a progress down the path. Um uh so you posit in the book and in a lot of your writings the centrality um and importance of three texts in particular which is pore corpus hermeticum one uh on being born again which is corpus hmeticum uh three and of course the discourse in the eth and the ninth right and corpus and the namadi kodic cotices um and I apologize I know this was a really long but uh this is kind of vouchers like life work So, I want to give him the floor to kind of just talk about this for a while and uh just go over it with us because it's a great honor to hear you always uh talk about this stuff. >> But thank you, Jason. Uh no, I mean, I loved writing that book. Uh I have to say it is my favorites among my books. Um I loved it and I um and I haven't and I I'm not done with the hermetica yet because I want to uh to continue the story also in the reception of the hermetica and the Renaissance and up to the present actually. So I will be writing more about it. So yeah, what was the book on all about? Um um well let me say first of all that I I have been frustrated for a long time uh trying to read the heratica in modern uh modern translations uh because certainly English translations uh Dutch translation that I know of French, German, Italian um it is often very hard to understand what these texts are actually saying and this has to do in my view with translation problems because um I think many of the most of the modern translations and certainly I would say the modern English translations are simply not reliable when you try to read them you it it's almost impossible to find out what they're actually saying. Um so what I was what I've been trying to do in this book is go back to the sources uh in the original languages read them um uh in a different way from the usual one because the usual translations and the usual scholarship uh I found out I discovered uh is based upon a number of assumptions that I think are questionable. Um, a lot of these assumptions had to do with something I referred to as philhelenism, uh, or helenopilia, the love of everything that's Greek. Uh, I already referred to this a little bit earlier. Um, now, of course, there's a lot to be admired and and to be laughed in Greek things. I mean, don't get me wrong. Uh, so I'm not against the Greeks. Quite the opposite. I mean, Greek culture is incredibly influential and important and wonderful. And the same goes for Helenism in it in all its forms. So um but Philh Helenism is an ideology I would call it an ideology that became uh dominant in circles of classicists and the wider culture uh especially in Germany but later also you know the rest of Europe let's say from the end of the 18th century certainly in the 19th century up to the 20th century and it's heavily influenced the way in which the hermetic text among other things were read and it meant basically that typical examples of Phil Helenism like festier indeed uh maybe the most famous example but many others as well but let's focus on fesier um basically assumed that um well anything that could be valuable in these texts had to be Greek uh if it came from uh Egypt then Egypt had to do with superstition and with irrationality and magic and that was that and so so what you see is a kind of an attempt to um now let me put it differently. I think these these scholars um realized that the hermetic literature was written in Greek by uh Egyptian uh authors. So they were a kind of an ideal um topic to investigate because you have the presence of Egypt and its enemy Egypt in one in the same context in these texts. So what they were trying to do is basically um say that well anything that was Egyptian and superstitious and irrational etc was bad and in to the extent that the hermetica has to be taken seriously and can be understood uh for modern people to it can only be understood and taken seriously in so far as it is Greek and rational and um so this means that there is a kind of an um tendency in all the scholarship to to uh marginalize the nonrational parts of it as they understood it at the expense um in the interest of the rational side. And the most um extreme uh example of that I have it here on the way is of course the famous yeah the famous edition by Walter Scott of the hermetica in four volumes. Walter Scott went as far as to completely rewrite the um if you look at his editions, he throws out uh sentences that do not say what he thinks the are supposed to say. He inserts other sentences. He mixes the text around in all kind of weird ways. And the final result is that he makes the hermetica look as though they are a kind of an acceptable rational uh treatis of Greek philosophy. Well, that's not what they were. Um that's not what they were at all. They were something very different. But if you read this um read this edition, you will no longer be able be able to find out. Well, similar biases you find in fisier. Fesicier. There's another element that comes to it. Not just the Greek classicist phil Helenist bias but also an Roman Catholic bias. He was a Dominican priest and you can clearly see that he reads Terramatica through theological lenses. And um maybe the strongest example of that which really shocked me in many ways is um the interpretation of the first of the three uh treatises that you just mentioned uh the poies corpus one uh which is very famous and uh this is really fascinating if you if you see what's happening there um there is the story in the Oandries at one point uh of how the world and how humanity comes into existence. There is the there's the the great uh noetic world the world with the noose the the divine light uh the noose the Greek word noose uh which is constantly trans mistransated in my view as intellect or mind it actually means the light of divinity the universal light of divinity uh that's the noose and we can come back to this translation issue later um so out of this noose the divine Um, a great human being is born, a great man because he he is androgynous but at one point he manifests as as male. And this um this grand man uh then bends down through the heavenly spheres and looks down on nature and nature is already there. Material nature is down there and she's depicted as female. So you have this grand man looking down at nature and he immediately falls in love with her and she smiles back at him and he rushes down and they start making love. Now that's what you read to the hermetica that's read in in the pandries. Now what you see happening and that's really I I that was a really an eyeopener for me uh what you see happening in the work of uh writenstein and festier and basically of most scholars ever since for the rest of the century is that they interpreted this story in terms of the biblical narrative of the fall of Eve and Adam. And where the idea is that this was read from a very misogynic uh lens that um uh Eve the woman uh seduces Adam the man. So the man gets seduced into sin by the sexual seduction of the woman and uh and then everything goes downhill from there. This is the fall of man, right? So the fall of man uh was seduced do by women by woman by Eve. Um now this whole narrative is projected onto the hermetic text. Um so uh by writerstein fier and basically everybody after that talks about this as the fall of man and this shows this narrative shows how the pure spiritual man of light gets seduced by feminine matter falls down loses its his own integrity his purity and yeah it gets swallowed up so to speak by matter and that's bad that's bad and ever since we're trying to escape from matter. Again, that's the basic narrative. Um, and so the whole liberation of the soul should be an uh liberation from matter, from the body and from sexuality and everything that's that related related to that. Now, what I discovered and what I the point I make in my book is that um none of that is to be found in the text. It's not there. Uh what you actually find there is not some fall of man into sin. Uh what you find there is an love story. Um which shows that the the the spiritual principle um um falls in love with the bodily principle, the material principle. They um they meet, they fall in love. It's a love story. They make love and out of it are is born humanity. And humanity is is um characterized by the fact that it is double and it's a point that is emphasized very strongly by uh for instance by the eskeipius another key text by the old way it's also emphasized by my friend Jeff Karriel that that human being is double that means that we are both spiritual and bodily at the same time and this is not a bad thing for the hermetica this is a good thing this is uh this is why um why humanity is superior in the at at the beginning of the eskeepius what you read there is man is a great miracle well again there you have man it's actually the human human beings are a great m miracle it's not just men it's women as well so uh human beings are a great miracle um and why well precisely because they have something that the gods don't have the gods are only spiritual but human beings are spiritual and bodily so they are able to bring the spiritual into the body into matter and they a they're able to yeah to create a wonderful world here on earth inspired by the light of divinity that's so it's a positive world of Arabic story and I make such a point of this because um if you read the secondary literature and I've really read everything uh uh you know chronologically as part of my research beginning from the 20th century throughout you know chronologically one after the other and then you see what happens And then you see that this meme because it's really kind of a meme that is um implanted by Renstein and Fesier. This meme of the fall of man seduced by female matter uh is just picked up from one scholar after the other. Nobody questions it. Everybody adopts it and it becomes fundamental also after the second world war II u new ideas about what um the liberation of the human soul is all about because if the problem is that we've fallen into matter then liberation must mean that we have to escape from matter but if there was no such fall and if the problem did not consist in a all of the spirit into matter then liberation must mean something different as well. Uh so then basically the whole story has to be uh yeah rewritten on the beginning. Well that's what I've tried to do. I've tried to show that um the hermetic literature is not based upon a dualistic view of spirit against matter. It's based upon a non-dual non-dualistic metaphysics in which um you ultimately cannot distinguish between spirit and matter. there's one reality there's just just one reality. Furthermore, um it is not just based upon a non-dual metaphysics. It's also based upon an um an ethics, an ethical uh notion uh of um embodiment as something positive. And here I just keep talking, Jason, if you if I talk too long, you have to stop me here. But um Oh, no. >> Okay. I was trying to be respectful, but there's so many things that I could just kind of add this just in terms of um so I'm partial to something like corpus for hermeticum or the mixing bowl and I think that this kind of ties into this ethics that you're talking about there's there's always a constant emphasis on um and I want to talk about altered states of knowledge for a bit but before we get to that I just want to mention that um I think that it's important to mention in these texts and how they've kind of been rearranged and and of course the importance that you place on these three texts and that Christian Bull has a a slightly But um also this emphasis on uh pointing out that there was a way as opposed to reading these texts out of context and out of sequence. we can see that there was a kind of spiritual pidea or learning that was going along to access this knowetic >> um conception of knowledge that you're talking about because you're right it's very hard to translate this concept of noose um you know it's not just the intellect it's kind of like I would I almost kind of consider it like this uh kind of underlying consciousness but that that kind of gets into krile territory that I'm I'm not completely comfortable in my wheelhouse there but um just in terms of the importance of and centrality of the ethical aspect of existence. There's uh they have there's these mystical visions but there's always an emphasis on the coming back and calling people to understand the potential that they can harness through this uh way of immortality, right? Uh so um like like you mentioned there's there's a kind of a noose and uh there's a the disc the discursive um language of academia breaks down the discursive language of uh Greek and Roman uh you know the usual concepts of of this learning. This is something that um I think uh my my favorite example of this is uh er Dodd's book the it's a great book but uh the Greeks and the irrational where he um not only the hermeticum but the the theical aspects of neoplatonic thought um calian oracles things like that were uh considered like a a change from the rational aspects of philosophical Greek thought to this descent into superstition and crisis in in the mind of these uh later thinkers like you know Pfury and Yamlus. Um I think that it's important to however get back into um the importance of these altered states of knowledge in accessing this uh knowetic poetry. Um and of course I think the most important um the most the be the most beautiful kind of representation of this and you emphasize this a lot is um the discourse in the of the eighth and the ninth uh where um there is this insane vision where like the son is like I see it father I see it and it's like words are breaking down and and eventually all you can do um um the teacher the father is saying you know all you can really do at the point when you reach this vision vision of um noetic uh reality is to thing hems in silence. So I don't know if you could talk about this for a bit. This is extremely important for this way of Hermes or immortal immortality. >> Yeah, absolutely. Uh but but in order to talk about it, I think I first have to talk about carbonat 13 actually uh about the rebirth because I think that that that comes first because you have this pidea this uh path this spiritual path of herbes like you say I totally agree with uh with Christian Bu um and um so what I'm arguing is that there is actually an kind of spiritual progress that you can delineate in the hermetica. Um, so the poment might be seen as the first step. So Hermes is in an strange altered state of consciousness indeed in a translike state and then he sees poandries the light of the news who talks to him and explains uh what the world is, how the world came into existence and so on. Not just explains it but shows it to him how the world came into existence, how humanity came into existence and so on. And this whole story of spirit and matter making love is part of that story. Okay, that's one thing. Uh now the second important part I think is indeed corpus 13 one of the most important text of the way I see this is um I think much more importance must be given than has been given in the past to um this concept that um human souls from the moment that they are being born um get invaded by um dmonic entities the tormentors as they are called in corpus of metam 30. So this idea is that that the moment that a soul is born into a body um uh at that very moment the diamonds the the dmonic entities that are on duty at that moment in the astrological sciences or in the constellations uh rush down and invades his or her body and his mind and they stay there. So all of us are possessed from birth by demonic entities that constantly influence our emotions, our passions that drive us to do all kind of terrible things often and so on and so forth. And this is the sorry to interrupt Dr. but this this testifies to the importance of astrological um the theoretical hermetica to um this way of Hermes you know this um and there's something similar going on of course in Yambleus of course with the theorical conceptions um but we can talk about that later but keep keep going I apologize. Yeah. Yeah. No, no, no, no apologies. That's how we we have a discussion. That's fine. Uh, no. Uh, so yeah. So, so I think that's very important and to understand what's happening in corpus 13 which is perhaps the most central text in the hermetica I would say almost uh you have to understand this concept of astral diamonds um who invade our body and um basically yeah determine our conscious basically um not determine which are present in our consciousness all the time. And so when we when people are cruel for instance that mean that they are cruel diamonds in them. If they are all loving and kind then it's because they have loving and kind diamonds in them and so on and so forth. So these diamonds are present in our body. They determine in many ways how we behave. And what happens in corpus 13 is the pupil touch uh is having a discussion with uh Hermes tresmistus he tells Hermes please I have been doing what you asked me I've been meditating I've been doing all kind of things I tried been trying to steal my mind against the deceptions of the cosmos which means in this context I have I've been trying to liberate too well to steal my against the influence of these diamondic entities that are constantly trying to influence us and I've tried to liberate myself as much as possible from those influences. But it's I'm ready to haveis now. Please can you give me um well Hermes then first is a bit evasive and he gives some mysterious answers that Todd doesn't understand. Todd thinks that he doesn't want to do it. Todd gets angry. He says why don't you do what you promised blah blah blah. So it's a quite an emotional uh confrontation but at one point uh it becomes clear that Tutt's consciousness begins to be changed. So there you have alterations of consciousness. He's slipping into some kind of state of mana of mana of divine madness of yeah an altered state. he starts feeling strange and weird and um Hermes takes this as a good sign and says well it seems that you might be ready actually for the rebirth and so and of course simplifying and summarizing here it's it's a bit more complicated um right >> basically I think what's happening is that he tells us okay you're ready for the rebirth now lay down and let me do the work he doesn't say that but that's just the way I interpret it so Hermes So Hermes is going to um help him achieve the rebirth. Tutt is let's imagine that Tutt is lying down with his eyes closed and and then um Hermes starts invoking the 10 powers of the light and this has to do with the 10 levels of the heratic cosmos. You have the seven planetary spheres. They have the eight sphere which is the sphere of life for living souls. You have the night sphere which is the sphere of the powers, the powers of light. So you have life and light. And you have the 10th sphere which you might also call the first sphere or whatever you call it. Uh the ultimate tense one which is the source the ultimate source in Greek the pag the ultimate source that the divine source where everything comes from. So there are 10 and uh so he starts to invoke those 10 powers of light into the body of Tutt and um what happens is that these team these 10 powers uh chase out uh the demonic entities in his body. Uh it's an exorcism. So the the dark demonic entities that have been there all his life are driven out are exercised and they leave with a flapping of wings as as the term say. So you really have to imagine it like that you know uh so they leave and then and the powers of light enter his body they weave themselves into a kind of new body of light which is now present in Todd's physical body. So that's the rebirth. So what happens is that the so the big story is that first the human soul gets born into a material body and comes under the impression under the influence of the diamonds and now he's reborn uh into a spiritual body after those diamonds have been expelled. It's very logical. So now um he's reborn and immediately you can see his consciousness changes radically because um the demonic ent entities had constrained his consciousness uh limiting it to time and space. One particular time where you are this moment and one space where you find yourself. The moment that you are uh liberated by rebirth uh your consciousness uh becomes universal. Um and so Tutt says I'm everywhere. I'm uh I'm here. I'm I'm there. I'm in the past in the present. I'm no longer limited by time and space. And what this really means is that he gets his consciousness unites uh because of the rebirth with what is referred as the ion as the um the um I interpret it as God's own consciousness, God's imaginal consciousness. Uh which sees everything at the same time. Uh God's consciousness sees the past, it sees the future, it sees the present. It sees everything. It's aware of everything and the moment that you get reborn you share in that consciousness. So you also your mind is everywhere and at all times and all places. So that's happens that's that's the rebirth and that's so that's a crucial moment. Just as a footnote here I already mentioned Walter Scott earlier. It's very very typical and I'm sorry that I keep picking on these old uh scholars but it's really important. >> It's welld deserved. It's well deserved. I am I am not a fan of that. >> I mean I mean Scott, it is an enormous labor that he's done. I mean it's very impressive. It's an incredibly amount of work. But unfortunately this very passage the the expulsion of the demonic entities of the tormentors gets printed by Scott into in small letters. uh he would like to like to uh to throw it out and he says so in a commentary he says this passage is not worthy of being included in the hermetic literature. Well, it's actually central to the hermetic literature. It is maybe the key to understanding the hermetic literature but you want to throw it out. So this is this how you see how modern editors and translators can completely lead you in the wrong way with the best intentions. Of course, Scott was really trying to understand the things as best as he could, but unfortunately he got it wrong. Anyway, so that is so touch is now being um now being reborn. >> Dr. Honograph, if I could add something just just to um just cuz this kind of came up when you were talking about this the so hot has devested he's devesting himself of what's called the tent or or the the body that's been corrupted by the diamonds and the astrological conceptions. um that it's called the tent in and according 13 and uh he's he's having you know there this vision being um kind of relayed to him and I found I think this is extremely important and it goes back to the concept of the imagination um that's important in the work and and I I just wanted to give a shout out and a thanks to you for bringing up a favorite of mine that doesn't get enough love the the solos of trolleys and his uh his vision and how his interaction with the Egyptian priest and I think it's extremely important. Um, and just as you were talking there about the seeing everything everywhere all at once in terms of the mind, it really reminded me of this concept that Jeff Kriel has in his latest book um this the how to think impossibly where he talks about this ontological dualism and how the human imagination is almost like this uh interface for the both and and and uh I don't know just I just wanted to add that No, no, absolutely. And I think Yeah. No, I think that's that's that's spot on. Uh in my book, I interpret the the ion. So, so touch consciousness becomes unified with the ion. The ion usually is translated as eternity. But here it means something different. I think uh he gets united with the ion which is really God's own consciousness. And is God's consciousness is God's imagination. That's really the imagination because God brings the world into existence by imagining it. Um, and by imagining it, he makes it real. So imagination is nothing to do with fantasy. It is an uh in our modern sense as you imagine the world into reality. Uh, that is what's that's what's really happening here. By the way, another footnote. I keep split slipping into an mistransation myself. I just noticed I just caught myself. Uh when you talk about God, um we use the word God as a kind of name, right? Like Jason or Vouter and there's God, right? But that's not in the Greek. It is really the God or it is the deity. And when we talk about our hermetic god and we talk we and we address him as God, we're using Jewish and Christian language, not pagan language. And um so I think we shouldn't talk about the god. We shouldn't talk about gods but we should talk about the deity or the divinity. Well okay that's a footnote and it makes a difference because um >> I agree. You know, I agree. It's extremely important. >> Um especially in the >> especially in this uh world where there are hierarchies of gods in a way. There's there's small god there's big gods, there's small gods, you know, diamonds, so to speak. There's all kinds of intermediaries. I think um a good uh general kind of sense to give the the audience a good general sense of this type of world I would kind of direct them to Appalas's on the diamond of Socrates >> uh where he talks about all these intermediaries um it gets very it gets very wild uh but um actually Dr. Hanograph before we move on um to the reception because the reception is just as important as the writings themselves especially in this period in uh Renaissance Italy, right? Uh but uh friend of the show a great YouTuber uh Dan Atrell from the modern hermeticist asks um your thoughts on the upcoming translations by uh Christian Wbergraph what he >> okay no that's very important uh that Christian wber um is working on a new edition of the corpus and translation as well and the important thing here and it's really revolutionary is that um that it turns out that there's there quite some passages in the Greek corpus that are hard or impossible to understand because the language doesn't make sense. There are grammatical errors and strange lapses, strange suddenly something strange happens. It's hard to understand, hard to translate. and he has found out that um very often uh there are so-called mechanical interpolations that were made by Byzantine scribes who are copying the Greek text uh because we don't have the original text anymore. We only have medieval um uh copies copies from copies. So we are dealing with the text of scribes and these scribes uh sometimes made marginal annotations uh you know in the margins and then the next scribe would often uh uh insert that marginal annotation into the main text and that results in uh all kinds of weird uh sentences and grammatical inconsistencies and all kind of other problems and so uh Christian Wilberg has systematically identified all those cases. So his new edition as I understand it will consist of a new translation of the corpus and a new edition in which all these passages are now again put into the margins. So you can see what is Marinabia and what is the original text and some texts that used to be very hard to understand suddenly become perfectly um comprehensible. good example is car carpetum 3 which has an incredible number of number of annotations. Um so that is what he's going to do and um I think it will revolutionize our the study of the hermetica. It should come out soon. Uh that's what I know. I hope it will be soon. Uh I've heard that it is under review or past review. So I think it should be this year or next year I suppose. Yeah. >> Yeah. I'm very much looking forward to that. I think that it's extremely it's an extremely um interest important insight uh especially because the scribal errors were so um and looking at these things as artifacts themselves, right? And the materiality of the text. Uh we tend to um I was having a discussion about the Greek and Greco Egyptian magical formula is another you know kind of mixed um cultural millia um that you know is either all Greek or you know not Greek enough or whatever. Uh but that's in terms of the um the scribal is issues and the materiality is extremely important and that actually leads quite well into the next um part of this discussion the final part of the discussion. Um so hermetic thought is to me exhibit A in rejected knowledge. Um it is uh symptomat it is part of what somebody like John Dylan would call the platonic underworld which includes things like neoplatinism and the theurgical uh aspects of thinking. Um it's also er dod you know like I just mentioned before it was like this crisis and descent into superstition by these thinkers. Um, but it was not def definitely not always the case. Right. So, um, a big favorite of mine. I think it's actually the book that when I first started the show, I contacted you to talk about because I've I've been a big fan of it for a while, but uh, and esotericism and the academy, uh, which is a lot about the reception of these texts and their revitalization of, uh, and eventual eventual ostracization and and the thought of of a lot of, um, important thinkers at the time. um you trace the trajectory of the corpus dramaticum's massive influence in the Renaissance thought um and its sort of downfall with these new stories of progress just speaking of the uh historical imagination and the stories that uh people tell themselves. It's kind of like poetry about oh the enlightenment or um in this case the Platonic orientalism and the perennial kind of ideas that were important to um pushing the corpus formedum into the the mainstream thought of this period of time. Uh so let's kind of discuss this. I'm going to give you the floor because again this is your your thing. So let's kind of discuss the reception of hermetica uh in uh Renaissance thought. >> Yeah, I'll be happy to do that. Uh I have have to remind you I have 20 more minutes because I have to go somewhere at quarter two but uh we can do that. Let me just very briefly uh because I we almost forget now to talk about the 8 to the 9th the octtoat and the anat right >> uh which you mentioned earlier and then I said that well in order to talk about first I have to talk about corpus 13. So I did that just very very briefly. Uh so Tot has been reborn in Corpus 13 and then in the Octoot the text that was uh found at Nakamadi and transmitted only in Coptic uh here we find how the reborn touch who already has this cosmic consciousness um that's to make one extra step and now he has to he's making an ascent of the soul which leads beyond the cosmos because in corpus 13 he gets universal uh experience of the whole cosmos in time and space. He can go anywhere but he still stays in the cosmos with his consciousness. And then in the 8th and the ninth uh we have an account of an experiential uh experiential ascent in which his soul the soul of thought together with Hermes actually travels through all the heavenly spheres beyond the cosmos and enters the eighth and the ninth sphere themselves. the sphere of of life and light. So that's very gripping and very impressive. And uh so that's the end that's the end of the whole PEA and I just wanted to fill it in just to just to complete the whole story. So, so yeah, um but that text of course was not known yet uh at the time when the corpus metatagum got translated because it's discovered in 1945 in namadi. Uh so in the renaissance you get the translation of the corpus from um yeah from the Greek into Latin by Marcio Ficino the great renaissance platonist. Um well here I have to say something. Uh everybody always talks about the importance of fino for translating the corporate and rightly so because he did it and it became very influential. Nevertheless, there are two notes that I would like to make here. One is that if if you actually read it then you find that it's a bad translation. Uh there are there are incomplete incomplete passages. Uh it is there are all kind of weird things going on with the Latin and this is because it was actually not published by Fino himself. It was published, it was an unauthorized pirated copy by two humanists, an Italian and a Belgian I think um who um published it without the consent of Fino or Koso de Medici. They rushed it through the press. uh it was full of mistakes and uh that's what everybody used and so um the one one effect of that was that um all the later editions of the corpus um of course this was done in the 16th century people knew very very good Latin so somebody makes a new edition based upon this one they notice that are all kind of impossible Latin sentences so they try to improve it and so you get new additions which uh which create new variants of the text and it becomes a mess uh you know quite frankly. So so that's an important part of it. So it is not just that the corpus and metatagon gets translated the corpus and metatagon gets also misunderstood because the translation was not very reliable. Um another thing is that fino himself who was of course a great intellectual frankly did not understand the hermetica very well. I think he was much more interested in platonism in Plato himself and other platonists. I think that he found the corpus heratum a bit of a disappointment. I don't think he understood it very well. Uh I think you can prove this. Interestingly, there was another guy who did understand the hermetica well and he has been forgotten and this has been some of something of an preoccupation for me. Uh uh well this was Ludo Vikolata Really and um largely forgotten humanist of the same period who translated the final three treatises of the corpus that were not translated by Fino because Fino translates only the first 14 uh treatises not the final three but that Lzerelli adds them so to speak that makes them the second translator and Lazarelli wrote an um very impressive small treatis a small book the crower I metis so the crater is that's inspired by corpus 4 which you mentioned earlier the crater the the vessel the mixing vessel of Hermes and this is an um new dialogue written by Lzerelli in which he himself um uh is the the teacher he takes the role of her stress magist he is teaching two pupils and who are actually historical persons, King Ferrant, an a well-known king in this period and his prime minister. And so he presents us with an whole hermetic dialogue, a Christian heratic dialogue, which shows that Lzerelli understood the hermetica much much more deeply, much more profoundly than Fino did. And I think he understood it better than probably anyone else in the 15th and the 16th century. Um so Lel is important but it has been forgotten. Um so yeah that's that's part of the reception history. Um by the way uh the great um humanist and author of magic Cornelius Agria with his famous book on three books on magic uh was heavily influenced by Lzerelli and um Lzerelli is I think a key to understanding standing the work of Agria who became very famous. So this is not insignificant. So then you have the reception of the hermetica and you get all kind of later translation. At one point the Greek gets gets edited as well and so on and then we move into the modern time. So we uh yeah you get all kind of modern later later translations. One person if I may looking at the clock um and you stop me Jason if I move on too far. Um, one person that I would like to highlight that has been that who has not received the attention again that she receives and you know you see what I'm doing. I'm always trying to call attention to people who have not uh been taken seriously. Lazerelli was one but this is another one and that is um the famous Mary Atwood um Maryanne South actually uh because she later married a guy called Atwood but when she wrote her famous book in in 1850 uh she was called Maryanne South that was her maiden name um and she published a book uh called a suggestive inquiry into the hermetic mystery 1850 um there's a whole fantastic sensational story about it because it got published and then her father uh bought up all the copies and uh and had them burnt uh you know in front of in front of their house. Well, actually a couple of them survived and now we have a modern new edition so so we can still read it but um so there was this whole story about it why that happened. It's a long story. I won't go into it here, but she wrote uh this suggestive inquiry into the hermetic mystery. This book has usually been seen as a key text for the development of um so-called spiritual alchemy. So this idea that alchemy is not just about material um uh substances but is about inner transformation of the mind. She is usually seen as the pioneer of that with this book. But there's a there's another aspect to this book. Uh it turns out to be heavily based upon the hermetica. Um perhaps even more than on alchemical literature. And it turns out that she um she translated uh well no she didn't translate. She um she interpreted their theatic text partly from the original because she had learned Latin from her father. uh partly based upon the influential uh writings of people like Thomas Taylor about the Plleonist etc. And there was and there was also a modern English translation that she had had access to of the hermetica and um and the hermetic her interpretation of the hermetica who runs through the whole book uh in a kind of a discrete manner and I think she's one of the she's actually one of the persons who understood the actual message of the hermetica better than most people and I would even go as far as saying that this amateur scholar because she never went to university and she wasn't a recognized classicist or anything like that. In certain key respect, she understood the hermetica better than the official scholarship that started in the 20th century with festicier and so on. That's a strong thesis, but I really believe that is the case and I think I can prove it. And of course, he made all kind of mistakes as well. It's not like uh it's not superior to the modern scholarship but modern scholars often have not understood what this that this hermetica was about this paa about this path of Hermes the importance of alterations of consciousness the importance of um liberating yourself on the diamonds uh you know attaining an other higher form of consciousness and all those kind of things the whole practical and experiential side that was misunderstood by modern scholarship and understood with remarkable clarity by an untrained uh you know amateur scholar Marann South. So I think she needs to get a recognition uh for yeah thank you for that reference I was not aware of her thought we'll definitely check it out and as as Stephanie from rejected religion says uh right here great mention so yes thank you Dr. for for highlighting that voice. Um I want to give a a quick shout out before we end the show to uh Dan Atrell from the modern hermeticist who um if this portion of the talk was too brief, Dan and I have a a great talk actually on this period of time and the reception of Hermetica and uh the Renaissance. Um, and he actually was the one who pointed me to a wonderful article that you have that kind of goes more into this concept you were hinting at of this disenchantment with hermetica and trying to make it um, you know, gel with the the Christian thought of the time. And you have an article called how hermetic was Renaissance hermitism. And uh, it's a great uh, source to go look at if anybody's interested in this period of time. But Dr. chronograph. I want to really emphasize just how um I want to how important this talk is to me and how honored I am to have you on the show. I want to uh recognize the importance of your uh work on esotericism. Uh we've just touched this kind of the surface everybody. If you're new to Dr. Hanograph, uh he he he's kind of the go-to expert on this uh topic. So, um, Voucher, I I am so honored to have you on the show. This is kind of like a milestone for me. So, um, thank you so much for being so generous with your time and knowledge. If there's anything you want to plug or talk about before we go, feel free to use this time. >> Well, thank you, Jason. I mean, it's you're very kind. It's a pleasure pleasure to be here. I love talking about this stuff as you've noticed. And so, no, no, no. Thank you for the invitation. Really, the pleasure is all mine. Um if there are questions of people who are watching then I'll be happy to take them. Uh you know in between um yeah the only thing I might want to plug is that if you're interested in my stuff then have a look at my website. Uh it's called uh vout yak. So w o u t e r j h a n e g r a a ff and then.net and you will find all my stuff there. You'll find my articles uh everything there and a lot of other things. So, um, that's the only thing. >> Yeah, it's a great great resource to check out Dr. Hanograph's writing. Um, I have it in the show description, so anybody can click on that. Um, and u, yeah, thank you so much for your work. The the book is esotericism and western culture. Uh, I would highly recommend it. It's a nice introduction. Uh, there's so much in the book. I we could only focus on hermitism in this talk. Um, but I want to thank everybody for watching. Until next time, everybody. Take care and uh we'll see you soon. >> Yeah, take care. >> Absolutely. And maybe I can I can finish by, you know, from my side by saying there's another wonderful uh resource for anybody interested in this stuff that I'd like to plug as well. That is the secret history of western esotericism podcast or fontel. And uh really warmly warmly recommended. It's fantastic. Certainly if you're interested in antiquity because he's taking you all the way from antiquity through the centuries. Fantastic. And um he always finishes his uh his talks with saying and until next time and stay esoteric. So maybe I can if you will allow me I will say you know hope to see you next time and stay hermetic.