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Hermeticism... It tends to pop up, and though I'm usually not interested I always get a strong urge to read about it... I haven't yet, because it seemed so unnaccessable before. This looks promising though. |
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Last edited by LighrkVader; 12-30-2017 at 03:58 PM.
Half of the time we're gone and we don't know where...
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Last edited by Darkmatters; 12-30-2017 at 06:49 PM.
Lol yeah, it's a gigantic rabbit hole for sure!! And the fascination keeps pulling you deeper and deeper. |
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Aarrgh, again.....I read a book about the painter Richard Dadd, who apparently went crazy and killed his own father, (thought he was the devil), but in the book it said he believed in hermeticism and believed his genius came from outside of himself and therefore he could not take credit for it....I was fascinated by that idea....and while reading this book, suddenly my eyes fell upon another book that had sat on my bookshelf untouched for years, it was all about hermeticism, and that was weird, how I just looked up at it, no conscious thought, I'd never thought about the book before, it was one I'd picked up a decade earlier for completely different reasons.... |
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Ok, if I may ask.....and divert the thread for a moment, what is Hermeticism in brief? lol and then, how does is parallel with Jung? I totally understand if no one has the time to answer me though, but I am genuinely interested, not just being difficult. |
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Actually if you read the PDF file Snoop linked to at the very bottom of the last page (I'm reading through it now) it pretty much explains everything you just asked about. It sometimes strikes me that essentially what Jung did was to bring the concepts of Hermeticism into Psychology. Already in the first few chapters of the little book they've discussed the Principle of Mentality (that everything exists in a great Mind, which we think of as Spirit or God or the Logos). It seems they were very close to understanding the Unconscious and its importance! Then there's The Principle of Polarity - aka the Reconciling of Opposites. Everything has its opposite - heat and cold, light and dark, love and hate, etc, but we must understand that these are not truly opposites by actually just extremes along a spectrum - a matter of degree. Where does cold end and heat begin? Same for light and dark. They're not really opposites but opposed ends of a scale (of temperature, of illumination, what have you). Then there's the Principle of Rhythm - that everything tends to move through cycles where it goes up and down in a wavelike motion. |
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Last edited by Darkmatters; 12-30-2017 at 11:05 PM.
As far as I'm concerned, this IS about Jung. Jung in a sense is mysticism brought forward into psychology. In fact, if you've seen the (excellent) Cronenberg movie A Dangerous Method, partly about his split with Freud, that was a big part of their disagreement - Freud was a hard-nosed practical realist and didn't want to tarnish their new field with allegations of mysticism and magic. He thought that might just be the end of it. But Jung persisted, and history was made. |
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Interesting and I'm reading the little book and things are forming some order in my brain now. Am I right in thinking that Hermeticism probably came before alchemy and may be the basis of it. Sorry to be so simplistic....but it's how I start with things, lol |
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As a psychology student, it is interesting to know about Sigmund Freud's academic history & clinical work and why he had beef Carl Jung. I have not finished watching the movie, but I do have a history of psychology textbook, containing the beef between Freud and Jung, that I have completed for leisure sake. |
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Hermes Trismegistus (I think originally just called Hermes - apparently Trismegistus means "the Thrice-Great") was the inventor of Alchemy. So they sort of are the same thing, or at least were born at the same time and of the same father, though actually Alchemy is just one part of Hermeticism, which also includes Astrology and the Kabbala. I'm not sure if there's more stuff in there as well. I suppose the way to look at is is that Hermeticism is the combination of all 3. Oh, also Tarot. Yeah, that's in Hermeticism too. |
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Last edited by Darkmatters; 12-31-2017 at 12:02 AM.
Sorry, I missed this post before. Lots going on in this thread today! I can hardly keep up! |
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Last edited by Darkmatters; 12-31-2017 at 12:56 AM.
As my fencing master, Maestro Ramon Martinez, said, |
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It was something I said to Snoop on page 4 - that the archetypes work through us, but we are not them, and it's a mistake to take credit for what they do through us. The proper attitude is, as Dadd said, to give credit where credit is due and to show gratitude. That in fact is a large part of the religious attitude - the gratitude attitude. |
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I guess I see the archetypes as inside my own head, but they're not? When I think of genius moving through someone, I imagine some kind of spirit, outside of ourselves. I don't know if I believe that of course, but I like it in an imaginative sense, and it's also my experience (at least how it feels when I get a good idea or something, lol)....I would never have equated this with the archetypes....but now I'm thinking that it can be described as going on inside or outside of ourselves? Either the archetypes leading us further into the unconscious, or an external spirit, leading us closer to something divine (divine inspiration). I though Dadd saw it as external. |
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This is one of the central ideas of Jung - that what we perceive as happening outside of ourselves - when it seems like magic or spirit or God or something (or genius) - is actually happening in the unconscious. People characterize the emanations of the unconscious as feeling cold and alien. It seems to be outside of us because it absolutely is outside of the ego, which is the conscious mind and is the part we think of as "me". This is why when an archetype or a complex or something affects our behavior (possesses us) it seems to be an external force, and why God also seems to be external, when he is actually the unconscious Self. It's true of course that the unconscious is technically inside, at least physically, but it certainly doesn't feel that way when you experience it. And it definitely is not inside of the ego. |
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Last edited by Darkmatters; 12-31-2017 at 06:20 AM.
Hermeticism is basically a set of principles that apply to the nature of reality that more or less makes very few unsafe assumptions about the truth of that nature... along with statements made by exploring those principles and following them to their logical conclusion and taking all that and integrating it all together into a comprehensive, all-encompassing understanding of the nature of existence itself. |
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Last edited by snoop; 12-31-2017 at 12:35 PM.
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Thanks Snoop, I'm still processing everything you said, but this is starting to make more sense to me now :-) |
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Last edited by Rosanna; 12-31-2017 at 09:41 PM.
Something else going through my mind, is the 'psychopomp' or the one that leads us to the unconscious. I've read in a few places that this is the animus/anima, but is it always? Hermes was referred to as a psychopomp....Just thinking it surely can't always be the case that it is our opposite 'sex' that has to take us into the unconscious....why would that be? Whats the difference between that and a mentor? |
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Man, you got me? I know the shadow and then the anima/animus are the normal way to get to wholeness according to Jung's individuation process - because of course those things you have either repressed or haven't yet realized/activated/encountered about yourself are what you need to achieve balance. Makes perfect sense. But then he gets into all his Alchemy stuff, which is where he starts to talk about Hermes/Mercurius - and I'm not nearly well versed enough in advanced Jung to understand any of that stuff yet. It's possible they're sort of 2 different ways of saying the same thing too? Hermes/Mercury is the messenger of the Gods - and I think he/they have a hermaphroditic aspect? Of course hermaphrodite is a combination of Hermes and Aphrodite - I think they had an offspring that was half and half. But I'm not very well versed in my Greek mythology. |
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Last edited by Darkmatters; 01-01-2018 at 12:02 AM.
Just found this - Jung speaks about Mercurius and Alchemy: |
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Last edited by Darkmatters; 01-01-2018 at 12:29 AM.
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