Category: Esotericism
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The Manifestation of Divine Light
“But All-Father Mind, being Life and Light, did bring forth Man (Ἄνθρωπον) co-equal to Himself.” (Pœmandres treatise) “This Man or Anthrōpos is the Spiritual Prototype of humanity and of every individual man, and is a technical term found in a number of the early Christianised Gnostic systems” (G.R.S. Mead). “So says the Zoroastrian: I hold…
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Hermetic Undertone of the Theosophical Society’s Foundations
K.H., The Mahatma Letters, Letter no. 85, December 7, 1883 “(…) As the lady has rightly observed, the Western public should understand the Theosophical Society to be “a Philosophical School constituted on the ancient Hermetic basis” — that public having never heard of the Tibetan, and entertaining very perverted notions of the Esoteric Buddhist System.…
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Ralph Waldo Emerson on the Over-Soul
American Transcendentalist and Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson discusses the nature of the over-soul “The Supreme Critic on the errors of the past and the present, and the only prophet of that which must be, is that great nature in which we rest as the earth lies in the soft arms of the atmosphere; that Unity,…
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Pico della Mirandola Oration on the Secret of Gnosis and the Dignity of Man
Pico della Mirandola on the secret of Gnosis
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G.I. Gurdjieff on Esoteric Christianity and the Slavery of the Masses
Peter D. Ouspensky, a Russian philosopher and student of Armenian mystic, George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff around 1870 recounts a conversation he had with him in his book, In Search of the Miraculous: Fragments of an Unknown Teaching (1949). In one account, Peter D. Ouspensky asks Gurdjieff: “Why if ancient knowledge is preserved, why aren’t such men…
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Limitations of Christian Cabalists and Bible Challenge Authority of Western Esotericism
Does the limitations of Kabbalah and the Christian Bible in the Studies of Esotericism blind Western Philosophers? Helena P. Blavatsky challenged the esotericists of her time, who saw in the Bible, the final authority, even in the area of esoteric study. “And now it has come to this: The student interested in the Secret Sciences…
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Goetia and Witchcraft: Origin of the “Witch” and Magic
The term “Witch” in old Anglo-Saxon glossaries is tied to wicce, meaning “pythoness, divinatricem.” As in this, and in early forms, it referred to specific kinds of magical craft. In the Laws of Ælfred (c.890), wicce is seen as the craft of women — “wise (skilled) women in the art of magic”; and in the old German, wiccan…
The American Minervan 