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Alchemy, Hermeticism & Forteanism

I would love to hear what an evolutionary biologist would make of this, as well as your own thoughts on the matter.
Yes me too. The implications for and likely causal correlations with the emergence of language, art and ceremony will surely prove to blow the minds of paleoscientists of all stripes. Not to mention the insights it will offer into the possibility of non-human sentience, animal, spiritual and other-worldly.
 
I certainly enjoy many of the graphics in this forum!

it feels to me like thinking about a different life is a motivating factor for considering the ramifications of this life in a transpersonal sort of way. I
I find it entertaining and useful to imagine what my current life looks like from different hypothetical past lives.
BTW—when asked, it never felt to my that I'd been an illustrious ruler in a past life, but either a peon or a slave!
 
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Lads, when you get back, you might give us your opinions on this blog.
http://www.thethinkersgarden.com/

Of course, all are invited into the circle of discussion but so few seem to respond to Esoterica threads. It has been my favourite forum for the past 18 months. Delightful area of Fortean fascination. So dark. So bright.

well I am back, my friend! i'll take some time to look further at this tomorrow. for the last few months I have been worked like a dog between fulltime work and finishing this research novel. but now the final draft of the manuscript is done! :domo::domo::domo:done with edits, fact checks, and all that shit. feels like a just finished a damn marathon or something.

so i'll be back on this forum much more frequently again. where have your researches taken you lately, skinny? done any experimentations you'd care to share yet?

I for one have been heavily contemplating the difference between Literal Truth and Metaphorical Truth, philosophically. it's almost a bit of a step back from technical details we've talked about in this thread, haha, but I think this is one of the biggest things that our culture is facing today. some people feel like the Metaphorical Truth is the only real truth, and then others think that only Literal Truth is truth. so few actually understand that both are extreme cognitive, adaptational advantages. when the literal cannot be attained, the metaphorical is a measurable step in the right direction. it's a shame that so many people seem to be struggling with this very dichotomy these days. maybe not a shame though, maybe more people will start to figure it out... fingers crossed.

cheers
 
The implications for and likely causal correlations with the emergence of language, art and ceremony will surely prove to blow the minds of paleoscientists of all stripes.

From what I can see in the current fields, this is an idea that is REALLY been starting to bubble over lately. its gonna take a while, these things are slow-working, but people are really starting to sink their teeth into these lines of thought.

I find it entertaining and useful to imagine what my current life looks like from different hypothetical past lives.
BTW—when asked, it never felt to my that I'd been an illustrious ruler in a past life, but either a peon or a slave!

I think from a psychological standpoint, all of what you said is extremely useful. even if not literally, certainly metaphorically. these ideas, when processed in the psyche, have the potential to totally modulate us epigenetically. and even if i was literally a ruler, i'm sure I was a wannabe, probably nothing super illustrious lol I'm certainly not saying I think I used to be somebody noteworthy lmao. *cough cough* David Wilcock thinking he's the reincarnation of Edgar Cayce *cough cough*
 
a quote worth sharing: "...that which he [ancient man] could not understand became like a crystal ball, and he looked into it and sought for an explanation. And if he gazed into the ball long enough, he started a problem of psychological projection, and found an impish or diabolic face staring back at him. He did not realize that this face originated in himself… All through life, if we look at troubled lives, we find people who have been troublesome to themselves. We know that all lives have their troubles and their problems, because no one is perfectly able to manage his own affairs; but a philosophic insight which implies that we could, or should, strive to organize our attitudes is a proper insight, and it will lead almost immediately to the realization that Cause and Effect operate; that this is a universe of Law and Order, and the reason we are in trouble is because we have caused trouble. And the only way out is that we shall cause solution.” - Manly P Hall
 
Nice to see you back, mate. I listened to your interview on soundcloud and was fully engaged from start to finish. I think there might be a few members here who could jive with your work. I'll be keen to get hold of a copy of the book when it comes available.

BTW, AlchoPwn won't be allowed back until mid-August as he's temp banned. Best not to ask what for. I'm having a sabatical myself, so I'll catch up with you here soonly. Fill us in in the meantime.
 
Well thank you, I genuinely appreciate that. I'll be in touch and let you know when that book is released! It will be before this winter for sure.

LMAO oh Al, he can be mouthy. I hope it wasn't anything very serious! when you say "best not to ask what for" it makes me wonder haha, but hey what can ya do. I will make sure to drop some more food for thought on here soon, for when we all regroup!

ttys
 
For any of you silent lurkers on this thread, here is the interview that I shared with skinny and Al. Wasn't sure if it was quite "Fortean enough" for this forum, but hey, i'm sure it's fine on this here thread at the very least.

my interview on the ABRACAST, with host Jon Towers. great guy, interesting show, and a very thorough conversation. discussing Goetia and theurgy, Yahweh and the Old Testament, CG Jung and the archetypes, hypnosis, Dr. Faust and selling your soul, neuroscience, Freemasony and Hiram Abiff, etc. I even go into some details of my own personal journey to help illustrate points of discussion. peep the book when it comes out. Official print release will be titled "DIVE MANUAL: REMEDIES FOR EXISTENTIAL HORROR".

https://www.spreaker.com/user/10529...uLcee-kpaauh-TqytZIQ_k6XCuqa_UDakho--CakFVviI
 
you are quite welcome, Frideswide. thank you for finding any interest in it.

Today is this thread's One Year Anniversary. Cheers, mates! this conversation has proven far more withstanding and insightful than I expected. this forum overall is a gem of a place. here's to another year of more alchemical conversation, yeah?:pcheers::pcheers::pcheers::domo::boss::boss::boss::sherlock::sherlock::joint::joint::witch:
 
some musings to add to any conversation here... my gift to the One Year Anniversary, lol.

i'm not coming in at this from any particular angle, so here it goes.

does it not seem like something is genuinely happening on a grandscale in the world? the internet is like a magnifying glass for the collective consciousness, and with social media psychological engineering, its becoming this very proto-Brave-New-World-ish. soma is becoming the pocket-screen, the black mirror. and I think people as a whole are beginning to recognize this, but one of the most popular solutions to it all is identity politics, which is no real solution. and a lot of people aren't even participating in identity politics, its simply all about the pocket-screen soma or something along these lines.

and it seems like New Age has really reached an all-time high, for better and worse. it seems like more people are open to esoteric notions, but no one has any idea how to approach them, so they go to the spiritual section of the barnes and noble or wherever... :chain: you can find some great books at these mainstream shops, but its so hit or miss that a lot of folks are coming up short on their hunts. it's almost like people are right on the cusp of really sinking their teeth into good subject matter, but not quite there. I really think that scientists engaging in philosophy like Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson (two biggest examples) are starting to put people on a better track. this is not a new track for me, but I've started to see more and more people than before try to approach philosophy once more, whereas it seemed dead for quite some time....

I hope I am not just a cynic, but the generations that are coming up behind me are starting to really concern me. there's a major disconnect. i'll be candid, i'm the first class of Generation Z (23 yrs old). if y'all oldheads thought millennials were bad, I hate to herald the news, but its not looking any better. Gen X and the Baby Boomers did their share in mucking things up, no one is guilt free here, but the screens are really doing something wonky to the millennials and Z's. I don't like the looks of it. I can certainly say that I use screens minimally, I even keep a flip phone on me. i'm not down with smart phones anymore, haven't been for years.

but if this technological magnifying glass doesn't lead to our end, it will become a potent adaptation. but it appears to me that technology requires a radical sense of self-responsibility as a species. this adaptation has to occur VERY rapidly, at least keeping up with the technological adaptations. and that is quite a task.

what I am saying is not new, of course. this is the classical argument behind the Manhattan Project and the stark moral ambiguity that these scientists seemed to have. technology calls upon psyche to step up to the plate, and we can no longer afford to keep it amoral. Technological amorality is becoming an apparent and stark maladaptation.

like Prometheus bringing fire to man and being punished by Zeus... there is a lesson to be learned in overstepping the boundaries of technological advancement. i'm not saying I don't appreciate the help of Prometheus', just saying the allegory can be approached from both sides. as it should.

let me wrap this up by taking it a step back. think of the inklings of technology as we know it. at its very beginnings, when we were only learning plant medicines and constellations... Dr. VS Ramachandran: "By hyper-developing the mirror-neuron system, evolution in effect turned culture into the new genome. Armed with culture, humans could adapt to hostile new environments and figure out how to exploit formerly inaccessible or poisonous food sources in just one or two generations—instead of the hundreds or thousands of generations such adaptations would have taken to accomplish through genetic evolution. Thus, culture became a significant new source of evolutionary pressure, which helped select brains that had even better mirror-neuron systems and the imitative learning associated with them.” [p.30 The Tell-Tale Brain]

presumably the adaptational curve itself gave way to our development of the cerebral cortex... but if the internet is like a magnifying glass to the cerebral cortex or even collective consciousness, then what the *$%# is happening to us as a species right now?

Think about meme culture. Symbols out the whazoo, whole subcultures of fans living and dying on the internet in a day. wtf is happening, seriously?

I for one, do not know. But I hope we are being primed to handle more gracefully handle the esoteric notions of the psyche. I really think philosophies like alchemy will only start to rise as time goes on, I think New Age is capitalizing on this fact but it will die out soon enough. people aren't going to settle for ambiguity anymore. we need a radical update in our individual moralities. these technologies are corroding a lot of us from the inside out and if the wheat starts to separate further from the chaff than its gonna get uglier before it gets better. Human beings simply cannot afford to make and consume anymore. time is of the essence, for real. we have to start thinking more about what compels us to make, and to do that we must consider how we are made, as individuals and as a species. and, so far, the only way for us to really wrap our heads around this, and to even get our sciences estimated in the right direction oftentimes, is to discover the Metaphorical, memetic archetypal truth. The Metaphorical eventually paves the way for the Literal, in due time.

that's all for now. as if I didn't say enough already. hope I provided some interesting food for thought. more to come!
 
y'all really out of ideas for now? lol. my mind has all sorts of stuff we could hash out but I don't need to talk to myself ya know :fetish:

I been seeing real weird stuff in the sky around here, made a post about that in ufology.

Anyways, mark my words, pretty soon its gonna be trendy to talk about the things AlchoPwn mentioned, like how he decoded Van Helmont, the sufis, and Paracelsus, et cetera. where are our modern empirical alchemists minds like Newton and Tesla, etc? this stuff will be back "in vogue" before too long, whether its vogue serves to be shallow or not.
 
Think about meme culture. Symbols out the whazoo, whole subcultures of fans living and dying on the internet in a day. wtf is happening, seriously?
I doubt you should be taking it all so seriously. Meme culture is just like kids trading amusing swap cards, then the joke gets old and they move on. In terms of the overall change that the internet represents, that is larger and more problematic. Over the course of history we have seen a number of times when humans have accepted a new information technology and it has created social upheaval. Think Gutenberg and the subsequent Wars of Religion. Think the rise of newspapers and the social unrest they caused when they first began. What concerns me about the internet is how much of it is junk information, and how illiterate and ignorant the discussions it promotes often are. I also worry about how people like to wander into echo chamber opinion ghettoes and stay put, only reinforcing their entrenched beliefs, never questioning them. I see this on all sides of politics, and elsewhere.
 
Unfortunately, that makes "meme culture" a way for hate groups to access and influence young minds. A mother recently brought this to the attention of National Public Radio in the US:
https://www.npr.org/2019/08/17/7519...-preventing-teenage-boys-from-turning-to-hate

Sorry I.N. but I think that may qualify as moral panic. I think freedom of speech is more important than worrying about hate groups influencing "our young minds". In the USA the threat of communism was used as an excuse to censor comic books and other forms of free expression, and it was and is a shabby way to try and make kids miserable by restricting their entertainment to something adults think is acceptable for them, which is inevitably just as condescending and paternalistic as it sounds. I have more faith in young people than that, and while I am disappointed about some of their choices, in terms of politics, they do just fine.
 
Parents have the right and the responsibility to be paternalistic in the way they raise their own children, AlchoPwn! Parents are the ones who are supposed to teach their children manners, after all. The mom's concern in this case was the possibility that her kids and their friends could be getting radicalized like potential ISIS members, but by a different set of violence mongers and by using mean spirited humor rather than angry videos. Apparently there is very little if any formal education regarding the Holocaust or genocidal epochs in this country and those aren't usually topics of dinner time conversation, so there is little in a child's knowledge base to contradict assertions that dominant cultural groups are being destroyed by cultural minorities. Dominant cultural groups feeling victimized by cultural minorities, and then using that as an excuse to forcefully assert their dominance, happens throughout human history and all over the place (obvious, but just to verify that I realize it, too, and don't think its is unprecedented). It is a cowardly and dishonest tactic.

Enticing children to use bullying and violence in order to achieve one's own political aims is exploitation of children, which people need to be aware of and able to intervene in. These styles of influence are insidious, but I agree that education and communication are the best remedies, not censorship. Having said that, social media algorithms need an overhaul; they help drive popularization of extreme content. (I often find it rather exasperating that YouTube is always set to "automatic" running of the next video, and how the videos so quickly end up being stuff I find extremely disgusting. I like cheesy 40s mystery movies, why would I like 80s gore? I don't get it.)

Advertising is insidious too and often uses humor, and I would argue that while the obvious results aren't usually violent, they are horribly destructive in that ads focus people's attention on having lots of disposable crap they don't need, and strives to perpetuate their lust for that crap, which ends up polluting the environment, etc.

And what does this detour have to do with this thread about alchemy, hermeticism and forteanism? Like this thread, this post calls on (or tries to call on!) people to cultivate self-awareness and a critical, observant mind.
 
Parents have the right and the responsibility to be paternalistic in the way they raise their own children, AlchoPwn! Parents are the ones who are supposed to teach their children manners, after all. The mom's concern in this case was the possibility that her kids and their friends could be getting radicalized like potential ISIS members, but by a different set of violence mongers and by using mean spirited humor rather than angry videos.
You have done nothing to convince me I.N. This still sounds entirely like moral panic. How many radicalized 7 year olds have blown anything up in the developed world? You are speaking about little children, not adolescents, and I am far more worried about adolescents (and not so very worried about them). In my experience it is normally authoritarian parents who do the damage. They do this thru displays of arbitrary authority; thru casual domestic violence in response to disobedience; by promoting fear and dependency; thru helicopter parenting; and by generally treating their children with disrespect, not as individual human beings but as annoying personal property that have precious little say in their own destiny. THAT's how you destroy a kid, not by showing them Kekistan memes. I personally loathe authoritarianism in all its forms, and psych studies are pretty clear that if you want to raise a little Nazi, the best thing you can do seems to be to act like Hitler towards your kids, and that includes policing their thoughts.
And what does this detour have to do with this thread about alchemy, hermeticism and forteanism? Like this thread, this post calls on (or tries to call on!) people to cultivate self-awareness and a critical, observant mind.
It was your detour. I merely responded to what seemed like an outrageous statement on your behalf.
 
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