Hermeticism loosely defined is the study of the natural or divine order. They are seen as one and the same. Today’s topic involves those aspects of nature that people consider darker or more scary.
In Hermeticism, all powers or forces in the universe are a manifestation of divine nature and thus divine will. But this idea is at first confusing to us on a human level, because it seems to suggest that the will of the divine is self contradictory.
The whole creation vs. destruction thing? That is part of it, yes. The destructive powers are equally a part of the natural order, but the primary understanding behind Hermeticism is this. That everything that exists at all is automatically and inherently in order.
Is that like believing that the trees and animals are all spirits, and they are often teachers and guides for humanity to follow? Hermeticism doesn’t exclude animism as a principle, but deals with these issues in a sort of scientific sense.
Any relation to God Hermes? It is indeed related. Also to the Egyptian God Thoth, also known as thought. This is where we get the word from.
In Hermeticism, all that exists takes its behaviour from the fundamental creative behaviour of the supreme or absolute being. This being is not a God as we think of Gods today, but is instead the ground from which all being takes it’s existence. Now all other beings, and orders of being, proceed by a process sometimes called emanation. So any being that we might be able to identify as a personality, or an intelligence of itself, is automatically not the absolute being.
This sounds similar to Kabbalah. We are all part of God. Indeed, Hermeticism does include Kabbalism as a viable model. Hermeticism is more like the science of the metaphysical and spiritual, and doesn’t need any one specific model to serve as a solitary cannon. It‘s sort of like how both physics and chemistry are recognized as legitimate sciences though they don’t really speak to each other very directly. There is the still unbridged schism between microphysics and macrophysics.
To that point, the three sciences of classical Hermeticism are alchemy, astrology, and theurgy. Each of the three Hermetic sciences were efforts to understand the operation and nature of the absolute being in our realm of existence, seen as three models or modes of behaviour all relating to the same thing.
What is alchemy? Alchemy is the study of physical behaviour. It includes all forms of terrestrial divination, as well as medicine and any form of naturalism. Otherwise, you are in the astrological rather than the alchemical, and the theurgic is beyond the astrological and the alchemical both.
So terrestrial, celestial, and divine? Yes. Hermeticism isn’t a binary science. It functions on a base of three, the divine trinity, in all it’s forms.
I suspect Hermetics wrote the Three Little Pigs. Indeed, and the big bad wolf would be the dark echo responsible for blowing old, poorly built houses down.
Entity of chaos. Yes, also known as Abraxas.
Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.
Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~