After a brief look at the occult last fall, we're taking a closer look at the Hermetic tradition, including some of the most popular literature on hermeticism and a survey of some of the sources behind the mythical figure of Hermes Trismegistus.
We explore some of the pseudepigraphical writings like the Emerald Tablet, the Corpus Hermeticum, and the Perfect Sermon, and the wild figure of William Walker Atkinson (AKA Magus Incognito, Yogi Ramacharaka, and many other names), who had some professional connections with the Freemasons.
Hermeticism is more than alchemy and astrology, and even these aspects have allegorical utility in addition to their physical scientific claims.
All this and more....
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[00:00:16] Preston Meyer: Kermit the Frog.
[00:00:18] Katie Dooley: Hi ho! Kermit the Frog here.
[00:00:20] Preston Meyer: I was actually just reading a thing earlier today that every time somebody does an interview with the Muppets, they always forget the Muppets aren't people.
[00:00:29] Katie Dooley: You know what I'm going to tell you that like, it was far too late in my life when I realized how Muppets work. Because, like, I knew they weren't real, but I didn't know how they were not real. You know what I mean?
[00:00:43] Preston Meyer: No. You're gonna have to tell me more.
[00:00:45] Katie Dooley: Like like I was like, it's clearly a puppet, but I can see his legs and he's talking, and he's sitting in a chair with Stephen Colbert. So where is the puppet master. I was just, like, always very. I was like, I recognize they can't be, but how are they not.
[00:01:09] Preston Meyer: Okay.
[00:01:11] Katie Dooley: And then I looked up how Muppets work.
[00:01:13] Preston Meyer: Yeah, I think it's funny when they put the microphone on the Muppet instead of on the person providing the voice, and then wonder why the sound is bad.
[00:01:24] Katie Dooley: So you gotta get the Muppet a fake mic.
[00:01:27] Preston Meyer: Yeah. For sure.
[00:01:29] Katie Dooley: Uh. Suspend disbelief. Yes. And then put one on. Frank Oz. Frank Oz is dead. But whoever it is now.
[00:01:36] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:01:40] Katie Dooley: Muppets, man, I fucking love a good Muppet.
[00:01:42] Preston Meyer: Mhm or when they're recording an ad and the director shouts at the puppet instead of redirecting the voice at the person controlling the puppet.
[00:01:54] Katie Dooley: Right. I also think I would have been a very good puppeteer.
[00:01:58] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Have you done a lot of puppeteering?
[00:02:01] Katie Dooley: No. But from what I have done, I think I'm quite good.
[00:02:04] Preston Meyer: Okay.
[00:02:05] Katie Dooley: I think with some practice and some lessons, I could have been a great puppeteer.
[00:02:09] Preston Meyer: Sure.
[00:02:10] Preston Meyer: Because I'm dramatic, but I don't like being the center of attention. So I could live vicariously through my puppet.
[00:02:16] Preston Meyer: I get you. I mean, that's I feel like that is very much the way Grover lived his life. Or the person underneath Grover.
[00:02:27] Katie Dooley: Yeah. Anyway, we're not talking about Muppets today.
[00:02:31] Preston Meyer: No Kermiticism. Better pronounces Hermeticism.
[00:02:35] Katie Dooley: Hermeticism, oh, man. Is Bryant going to elave the entire preamble about me and the Muppets?
[00:02:42] Preston Meyer: I'm okay with that.
[00:02:44] Katie Dooley: I kind of am, too. Yes. So we talked briefly about Hermeticism in our Occult episode, but we actually think it deserves an entire episode on today's.
[00:02:57] Holy Watermelon podcast.
[00:03:01] Preston Meyer: Yeah, there's there's a lot more to it than our very brief gloss back in. What was it, October?
[00:03:08] Katie Dooley: Yes, Spooktober.
[00:03:11] Preston Meyer: Our Cursed Occultism Episode that took several takes.
[00:03:15] Katie Dooley: Far too many takes.
[00:03:17] Preston Meyer: Before we could actually have a saved product that was shareable. It's not that we screwed up over and over again in the performance, but.
[00:03:29] Katie Dooley: The Devils took the audio.
[00:03:30] Preston Meyer: Yeah, the audio files just kept getting corrupted or lost or whatever.
[00:03:35] Katie Dooley: We're better now.
[00:03:37] Preston Meyer: We've we've grown.
[00:03:39] Katie Dooley: Yes. Hermeticism is also known as Hermeticism or Hermetics. And I mean, all of that comes from the Greek god Hermes.
[00:03:49] Preston Meyer: Yeah. The the phrase hermetically sealed As much as it doesn't sound like it should come from this, it does. Not even Hermes could get through to the hermit is a handy little reminder of what it means that something is fully airtight, which is tighter than watertight. For those of you who may not have to deal a lot with containers.
[00:04:21] Katie Dooley: For those of you who don't own Tupperware.
[00:04:25] Preston Meyer: But it's actually a really important process in making the Philosopher's Stone, which of course is something that is lost to history. We just we don't know how to make the Philosopher's Stone anymore. Katie's shaking her head at me. It's not real. There's no evidence that the Philosopher's Stone is real, but an awful lot of stories like to use it in their in their narrative.
[00:04:53] Katie Dooley: Fair.
[00:04:54] Preston Meyer: Harry Potter went after it. Indiana Jones went after.
[00:04:57] Katie Dooley: Notably, Indiana Jones went after.
[00:05:01] Preston Meyer: From a much smaller audience.
[00:05:03] Katie Dooley: Right. While Hermetic philosophy has wormed its way into monotheistic traditions. Old Hermeticism is pantheistic. God is the ultimate reality and is itself all.
[00:05:18] Preston Meyer: Yeah. While also the creator of all. It's it's a weird well...
[00:05:26] Katie Dooley: Self-fertilizing.
[00:05:28] Preston Meyer: Yeah, it's kind of like what we talked about with Ra back in our Egyptology episode, or it's a really common way of looking at God in that part of the world. This is a pretty standard stoic theological declaration that God is all but also the creator of all. Which is a tricky thing to wrap your head around.
[00:05:54] Katie Dooley: The Nag Hammadi library is that the one that was found because of a murder where the Gnostic Gospels were found? Okay, that's a wild story.
[00:06:08] Preston Meyer: Yeah. So they just found a whole bunch of books in Nag Hammadi in modern-day Egypt, and calling it a library is a little bit weird. It was a collection of books in a space that was purpose-built. So it is kind of a library.
[00:06:24] Katie Dooley: They were found in like ceramic massive, like terracotta jars and buried. If this is the same one I'm thinking of.
[00:06:34] Preston Meyer: The Dead Sea Scrolls also fit that description.
[00:06:36] Katie Dooley: Oh, interesting.
[00:06:37] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:06:37] Katie Dooley: No, I read Elaine Pagels Gnostic Gospels and she says how they were found. And I think it's Nag Hammadi.
[00:06:44] Preston Meyer: Yeah and so they were discovered back in 1945. So relatively recent history. This is like after the Second World War.
[00:06:54] Katie Dooley: Yeah. So a huge breakthrough in theological and religious studies, but a whole bunch of them were destroyed. Because of the murder that they were related to when being found. We'll, do a whole episode on that.
[00:07:12] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:07:13] Katie Dooley: Basically, someone murdered someone and they had found the Gnostic gospels, and so they were burning them to hide the fact that they had murdered, like, they didn't want proof that they had put them at the scene of the crime. Except these are super valuable it's a historical text, anyway.
[00:07:33] Preston Meyer: Anyway, all of the things that we have found in the Nag Hammadi library basically take up a decent-sized book on the shelf. I've had them on my shelf for years and years now, And it's roughly the size of a Bible, which of course the Bible more or less means the books. It is also a library. The Nag Hammadi library is a lot more, I want to say, contentious. There's there's a lot more arguing about whether or not it's worth reading the texts from the Nag Hammadi library, or at least there used to be. Nowadays, there's a handful of people who find them valuable, and everyone else is like, meh, don't care.
[00:08:19] Katie Dooley: Yeah, and I mean, we're not here to talk about Gnostic gospels or rejected Christian gospels, but I think that was a big part of it, is that they didn't make the Bible. So now we have to get rid of them or hide them or whatever.
[00:08:35] Preston Meyer: Yeah, well.
[00:08:37] Katie Dooley: Because for whatever reason, we've chosen these records to not be the ones we want people to listen to anyway.
[00:08:45] Preston Meyer: It's more of a system of deciding which are authoritative and then just kind of not worrying about the rest. Once you get into the point of banning a specific book, that does help make it more popular, unless you're really good at that first job.
[00:09:01] Katie Dooley: I hope our podcast gets banned.
[00:09:04] Preston Meyer: That'd be all right.
[00:09:05] Katie Dooley: Yeah. Mm. Anyway, so importantly, they found, um, hermetic writings in the Nag Hammadi library before we had this digression.
[00:09:17] Preston Meyer: Not very many, but they did find a few. A couple specifically attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, a very important figure in the Hermetic tradition.
[00:09:28] Katie Dooley: What?!
[00:09:29] Preston Meyer: If you couldn't have guessed by his name.
[00:09:32] Katie Dooley: We now know that Hermes Trismegistus is a fictional amalgamation of Hermes, the Greek Hermes, and the Egyptian Thoth with other elements that have been added throughout history.
[00:09:45] Preston Meyer: Yeah, we pointed out in our Egyptian theology episode that the Greeks had just automatically assumed that Thoth and Hermes were equivalent, because that's that is how they looked at the world.
[00:09:56] Katie Dooley: Yeah, but no.
[00:09:58] Preston Meyer: That's that's not how any of this works. Um, and then, of course, as years went on, aspects of both Imhotep and Amenhotep also ended up getting fuzed in making the character a little bit more rounded and other aspects of whatever people found valuable at a given time also got thrown in.
[00:10:22] Katie Dooley: Trismegistus is important in some Muslim traditions, especially in Sufism, which is the mystical tradition. He is often equated with the prophet Idris as well, or the biblical Enoch.
[00:10:35] Preston Meyer: Yeah, the creator of writing and the Jewish tradition makes sense to be equated with.
[00:10:43] Katie Dooley: Thoth in particular, yup.
[00:10:44] Preston Meyer: The Egyptian equivalent.
[00:10:47] Katie Dooley: People who invented writing.
[00:10:50] Preston Meyer: Yeah, stories lining up even kind of closely make it really easy for people who don't like thinking about complicated things to combine the figures.
[00:11:03] Katie Dooley: Preston likes pizza and I like pizza ergo, wear the same person.
[00:11:08] Preston Meyer: Right? It's like when the Pope decided that three different Mary's and somebody else who goes fully unnamed in the New Testament are all the same person.
[00:11:18] Katie Dooley: Well. You don't want to put that much effort into it. He thought, there are too many Bible characters.
[00:11:27] Preston Meyer: You know, these stories that take place in the real world have too large of a cast.
[00:11:35] Katie Dooley: So eliminating three of literally thousands of characters is.
[00:11:40] Preston Meyer: Yeah that's And simplified things. So sure, it happened anyway.
[00:11:46] Katie Dooley: Back to the Muslim tradition. Muhammad is said to have encountered.
[00:11:51] Preston Meyer: Trismegistus.
[00:11:52] Katie Dooley: Trismegistus. I was like, which him are we referring to in the fourth Heaven.
[00:11:59] Preston Meyer: Or Idris, I think is probably the name that it showed up now that I'm thinking back. Having written these notes, I'm going off of memory now because clearly I just I put him anyway. Also, there's a lot of Christian thinkers that thought Hermes Trismegistus was a pagan prophet who foretold the rise of Christianity.
[00:12:24] Katie Dooley: Interesting, like a Nostradamus.
[00:12:28] Preston Meyer: Kind of. Yeah, there's there's a lot of people in Christendom that have decided. Well, yeah, if they were real prophets at all, and they jumped on the bandwagon saying Hermes was. Then obviously they would know that Christianity is coming because we're committed to it. It's kind of weird. There's also within this group of Christians who really like Hermes, there's a subset that are fully committed to the idea of the Trismegistus as a name means that he was fully committed to the Trinity, that he praised the three rather than what the name actually means.
[00:13:13] Katie Dooley: He's thrice great. Yeah. Not that the Trinity is great.
[00:13:17] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Yeah. The name Trismegistus is taken from Thoth. The great, the great, the great. Uh, which should be understood as the greatest among the greatest of the great. So this dude is the absolute top.
[00:13:35] Katie Dooley: He's the bee's knees.
[00:13:36] Preston Meyer: Exactly. It's kind of like how we see the convention in the Middle Eastern languages. How they talk of the Holy of Holies, or the sanctum sanctorum is the holiest of the holy places. So easy enough to get on board with simple language for a simpler time.
[00:13:59] Katie Dooley: Not particularly quantifiable, but.
[00:14:03] Preston Meyer: Right. But.
[00:14:06] Katie Dooley: But we get there. I pick it up what they're laying down.
[00:14:08] Preston Meyer: Now you're talking about qualities.
[00:14:10] Katie Dooley: Quality, not quantity.
[00:14:14] Preston Meyer: Uh, it's like the name Megan, which I think you should never name your child Megan.
[00:14:19] Katie Dooley: I was supposed to be a Megan.
[00:14:20] Preston Meyer: Unless she is more than 8 pounds at birth or more than 22in long at birth. Because the name Megan means big or great, but great really, to be fair, means big.
[00:14:39] Katie Dooley: I don't know how big I was when I was born, but I didn't get named Megan, and I was supposed to be named Megan. So I had big feet when I was born. Yeah. First thing the doctor said.
[00:14:50] Preston Meyer: Oh, those big old Wiley coyote feet.
[00:14:52] Katie Dooley: Yeah. Basically. You got a clown, baby, ma'am!
[00:14:58] Preston Meyer: That's great.
[00:15:01] Katie Dooley: There's also a theory that Hermes Trismegistus may have been a real king. What is that term again?
[00:15:09] Preston Meyer: Hermeneutics?
[00:15:11] Katie Dooley: No, no.
[00:15:12] Preston Meyer: That's something different entirely. Why is the word... Euhemerism!
[00:15:16] Katie Dooley: That's okay. That's what I thought.
[00:15:18] Preston Meyer: I don't know why. I'm just going through words in my head.
[00:15:21] Katie Dooley: Yeah. So euhemerism where they believe he may have been a real king with the amalgamation of these gods associated with him, because there are writings attributed to him. So how? But we also know that he's the amalgamation of two gods, so the chances of him being a real person with these gods slom.. Glommed on to him later is.
[00:15:45] Preston Meyer: It's possible, but my bets are against it.
[00:15:48] Katie Dooley: Then who wrote the stuff?
[00:15:50] Preston Meyer: Well, there's an awful lot of strong traditions all over this area, geographically and historically, where people like writing and publishing a book under somebody else's name. Egypt and Greece and all over the Middle East. Actually, it's.
[00:16:10] Katie Dooley: Another Middle Eastern religion.
[00:16:12] Preston Meyer: Yeah. I mean, Egypt isn't strictly Middle East, it's Northern Africa. But culturally they're well connected to Greece and the Levant. Yeah. So that's it's a thing that we see. And so my inclination is that literally all of the writings credited to Hermes Trismegistus are what we call Pseudepigraphical, which means written under a false name.
[00:16:41] Katie Dooley: Oh, that's a great word!
[00:16:44] Preston Meyer: Right?
[00:16:45] Katie Dooley: Wow.
[00:16:46] Preston Meyer: It looks long in writing. And the only reason I could say it in one go like that is because I've said it many times before.
[00:16:56] Katie Dooley: All I saw was the word pig.
[00:16:58] Preston Meyer: Sure. Right in the middle. Yeah, yeah yeah, yeah. You can put lipstick on a pig, but.
[00:17:06] Katie Dooley: You can't pseudepigraphical a pig.
[00:17:10] Preston Meyer: Sure you could
[00:17:11] Katie Dooley: I guess.
[00:17:13] Preston Meyer: And this book was written by Babe, the pig in the city.
[00:17:18] Katie Dooley: It's autobiographical. So because of these god-like associations, Hermes Trismegistus, if I guess, if you're a Hermetic is considered to be the founder of science, math, philosophy and more.
[00:17:38] Preston Meyer: Yeah. What a pitch! I like it.
[00:17:42] Katie Dooley: Run! Don't walk to your nearest Hermetical society.
[00:17:47] Preston Meyer: Sure. Uh, yeah. So among the writings that were found in Nag Hammadi, there is one hermetic text that talks about the Egyptian mystery schools and the nature of the great mysteries of God. I thought it was kind of interesting. Uh, basically, mystery schools are an Asiatic traditions that offer a knowledge that's secret for some reason or another, and a little bit at a time given by degree to their priests or magi or whatever they want to call the members of their order as they rise through the ranks of that order. And there's usually a mythological narrative wrapped around all of that. This is pretty familiar to people in the temple of Set, I want to say, the Church of Satan, and Freemasons, a couple of Christian churches, um, not any of the mainstream ones though, and shows up kind of sort of in the Latter-Day Saint tradition as well, but not really in the same way, but it's kind of nifty. Secret knowledge is, in most mystery schools, more of a distinction between classes than a reason for different classes. Just kind of a deliberate here's separations between the orders.
[00:19:09] Katie Dooley: Okay
[00:19:10] Preston Meyer: makes people feel special.
[00:19:12] Katie Dooley: Unless you're not in any of them.
[00:19:14] Preston Meyer: Sure.
[00:19:17] Katie Dooley: Hermetic writings got really popular during the Renaissance, and until Isaac Casaubon published that he could find no evidence that any of the texts dated before the second century CE. So this is super frustrating to the Christians who thought that Hermes was a real person, contemporary of Moses or even older.
[00:19:38] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:19:40] Katie Dooley: This is interesting to me that I mean, now I don't think anyone well, I shouldn't say that's unfair. We did our episode on Greeks, but very few people think anyone in the Greek pantheon was actually real, and very few people think that they're still real. So it's interesting to me that Christians, one God, were like disappointed that another God didn't exist.
[00:20:05] Preston Meyer: So for Christian Hermetics, Hermes Trismegistus wasn't a god or god combo figure, but he was just, that was the name given to a triply great prophet.
[00:20:20] Katie Dooley: That triply loved the Trinity.
[00:20:22] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Before Moses.
[00:20:24] Katie Dooley: Wow.
[00:20:25] Preston Meyer: Most Hermetic philosophical writings are based on the ideas of Platonists and Stoicism combined into traditional Egyptian wisdom, and fairly often there's little sprinklings of Persian and Jewish ideas thrown in there, too, just to make it look exotic to whoever is reading.
[00:20:45] Katie Dooley: Oh, I love that. Ooh. So there's two categories. There are two categories of writing. They're either technical or philosophical or religious. Technical is how to do magic things. So alchemy, medicine, astrology, that kind of stuff.
[00:21:04] Preston Meyer: The things that you get to do, yeah.
[00:21:07] Katie Dooley: Practice and then the philosophical is how we think about the world to gain power over it. And this also includes things like anthropology and theology.
[00:21:18] Preston Meyer: Understanding people, understanding God, all tricky nonsense. And so as much as you can you can argue all you want against the technical stuff of I tried this alchemy process a hundred times, never worked. It's a lot harder to argue against the philosophical writings in a concrete way. You can say, yeah, I disagree with that, or no, that this idea has no value, but more discussion.
[00:21:49] Katie Dooley: Yeah, I mean, it's literally what we do here every other week. And, uh, ties in with our belief episode. Like, you can think you know, someone you never really know, someone.
[00:22:02] Preston Meyer: Sure.
[00:22:03] Katie Dooley: Or how their beliefs come out or that's a rabbit hole. I'm not willing to go down right now.
[00:22:13] Preston Meyer: There's some pretty cool texts in the Hermetic tradition, though. The Emerald Tablet is a nifty thing. It's attributed to Hermes Trismegistus. It's basically lost to time whether or not there ever was actually an emerald tablet. We have no way of knowing.
[00:22:32] Katie Dooley: I was very confused when I was researching it, because there's quotes that will be familiar to our listeners that come from the Emerald Tablet. But I couldn't actually find if it existed or not.
[00:22:45] Preston Meyer: Yeah. The oldest reproduction of the text is an Arabic manuscript, dating to around 800 CE. And if it's a copy of text that somebody had carved into the Emerald tablet, or just something that somebody wrote down and...
[00:23:04] Katie Dooley: Said it came from an Emerald tablet, yeah.
[00:23:05] Preston Meyer: Yeah, we we don't know. But there's a bunch of different interpretations that came out as it has been translated into Latin by different editors in different places at different times. Unfortunately, at this point, we don't really have the authoritative text of the Emerald Tablet. Of course, the question of did it ever exist? But it's kind of cool.
[00:23:32] Katie Dooley: It is a revered document, but I guess it's a tablet.
[00:23:38] Preston Meyer: I mean, at this point, it's a document.
[00:23:39] Katie Dooley: It's a document. It's revered by alchemists. It's supposed to be part of the finding the philosopher. It's a piece of the Philosopher's Stone puzzle. And it's where we get the popular phrase "as above, so below". And the full quote of that. Again, this is where I was like, is this real? Because it says from the Emerald Tablet, but clearly it's from the reproduction is "that which is above is like to that which is below, and that which is below is like to that which is above". And it gets abbreviated to the much more common as above, so below.
[00:24:12] Preston Meyer: Because it's way easier to remember four words without screwing it up than that whole line.
[00:24:17] Katie Dooley: But what the heck does that even mean, Preston?!
[00:24:20] Preston Meyer: It basically means that the world that we know is more or less a facsimile of what we see in the heavens and the world beyond that we can't actually see. But also in that same way, what we see in the heavens is, what we can see in the heavens is a great way of understanding the little things. This helps... This seems more valid when we compare the atomic model to the heliocentric model of our solar system, that we've got a thing in the middle and a whole bunch of stuff whizzing around it real quick.
[00:25:00] Katie Dooley: Wow.
[00:25:06] Preston Meyer: Yeah, so that's basically it. If you can understand yourself, you can understand the bigger concepts like spirituality, the universe, physics, everything's connected.
[00:25:17] Katie Dooley: This kind of gave me gave me some Buddhist vibes.
[00:25:20] Preston Meyer: That's fair.
[00:25:22] Katie Dooley: I mean this part of it. We'll get into other principles of Hermeticism in a moment, but this particular one where they're, you know, understanding the self is understanding God. I was like, that's given me eastern tradition vibes, Buddhism in particular, but a little bit of Hinduism.
[00:25:40] Preston Meyer: Yeah, that seems pretty fair to me.
[00:25:42] Katie Dooley: Anyway, just interesting how everything works together.
[00:25:47] Preston Meyer: Right. Well, and something else that is a common idea in Hermeticism is the idea that there is a true theology that is presented in some sort of flawed way in every religion around the world. And so it does basically pull everything really tightly together or less tightly if you're a little more off the beaten path.
[00:26:17] Katie Dooley: Unless you're a jerk.
[00:26:19] Preston Meyer: Right.
[00:26:21] Katie Dooley: We haven't said, don't be a dick in a long time, so...
[00:26:24] Preston Meyer: So don't be a dick.
[00:26:25] Katie Dooley: Just a gentle reminder, dear listener. Don't be a dick.
[00:26:34] Preston Meyer: Mhm. Uh, the Emerald Tablet also contains the three disciplines taught by Trismegistus. Alchemy, astrology and theurgy. We get a little bit more into that later on, but these are the three important wisdoms of the universe.
[00:26:52] Katie Dooley: And this is where. And we're we'll we'll chat about this. But the lines I don't want to say the lines blur, but when we in our... This is why Hermeticism came up in our Occult episode because of these practices. Honestly, digging deeper into Hermeticism, I think the Occult is just a bunch of hooey. Like, I don't think. I think you asked anyone to, you know, people who are scared of the occult and were like, don't read Harry Potter because of the occult, couldn't actually explain to you what the occult is.
[00:27:25] Preston Meyer: For sure.
[00:27:26] Katie Dooley: Right? Anyway
[00:27:28] Preston Meyer: Unless they very often the default is it's magic and magic is bad, I guess.
[00:27:39] Katie Dooley: Which this makes the next point interesting to me. Again, especially when you get the people who are whatever scared of Harry Potter or fill in the blank. The Emerald tablet appeared in The Eternals and now I actually need to go back and watch it.
[00:27:57] Preston Meyer: I only watched the movie once, and I'm gonna be honest, I did not jump out at me.
[00:28:00] Katie Dooley: No, it was like. It was like in I when I was doing the research, it was in passing that I know Druig was involved, but I don't know if he said it or was like the recipient, but someone was like, where did you get that cool Emerald tablet is basically the where'd you pick that up? Was sort of the reference. And so I don't know if it'll be important later or if it was just like a this is cute.
[00:28:24] Preston Meyer: Sure. I mean, pretty often when it shows up in any narrative, it's a big deal. It shows up in Dark, show on Netflix it's a time traveler thriller, and it's a dude's got a tattooed on his back. It shows up on a door. Both of these images are actually taken from a drawing of somebody's impression of what the Emerald Tablet probably looks like. The dude had it drawn into a book about 800 years after the stone was supposedly lost or more. Kind of tricky.
[00:29:04] Katie Dooley: But back to my point, and we can elaborate on it when we wrap up the episode. But again, these people get all mad about Harry Potter and the occult. It's like A) did you even notice it in The Eternals? B) do you know what it means? And C) like, do you care?
[00:29:22] Preston Meyer: Right?
[00:29:24] Katie Dooley: Like there's and when we get into the seven principles, like there's so much Hermeticism just in our everyday lives that if you equate Hermeticism with the occult and again, I think most people can't actually define the occult because we had a hell of a time doing it. Um, like, I, I don't know what my final point of that was. My brain stopped.
[00:29:48] Preston Meyer: Don't slam a thing you don't understand.
[00:29:51] Katie Dooley: Thank you.
[00:29:51] Preston Meyer: Don't be a dick.
[00:29:52] Katie Dooley: Don't.... Thank you. It just. I don't think people realize how much of our stuff comes from non-Christian places, especially in the West.
[00:29:59] Preston Meyer: Yeah, yeah.
[00:30:02] Katie Dooley: I'll just step down from my soapbox.
[00:30:05] Preston Meyer: All right. Uh, next text we have on our list is the is the corpus hermeticum, which I think is kind of nifty.
[00:30:14] Katie Dooley: I just thought the first fact was nifty because I am an art history nerd. If you are like me and an art history nerd, you'll appreciate that Cosimo de Medici had the Corpus Hermeticum translated into Latin from Greek.
[00:30:32] Preston Meyer: Yeah, it's kind of funny that Cosimo had paid a couple of translators to do a whole bunch of work of translating the works of Plato, but as soon as they got their hands on the corpus hermeticum, they dropped that.
[00:30:47] Katie Dooley: Like, stop that shit.
[00:30:48] Preston Meyer: We got to do this. This is way more important.
[00:30:51] Katie Dooley: So if you're not an art history nerd, I'm not going to spend like, two seconds on the Medicis. So the Medicis were the first family of influence that didn't have a royal... they weren't royals. They just had a ton of money. They were bankers when usury was still a thing. So they got a lot of wealth and power from just being bankers. Um, to the point where one of the Medicis became pope. But Cosimo in particular, he paid for so much art in Florence, like some of the best things that you go and see and learn about in school were paid for by Cosimo, including Donatello's David and the Duomo, the big dome in Florence. Um, and a whole bunch of other crazy cool art stuff. So. But he had...
[00:31:39] Preston Meyer: I've never even heard of Donatello's David.
[00:31:41] Katie Dooley: What? Oh
[00:31:42] Preston Meyer: I've heard of Michelangelo's David.
[00:31:45] Katie Dooley: Oh, no. Yeah. No. Yeah. No, it's Donatello's David. It's like a little boy.
[00:31:50] Preston Meyer: Okay.
[00:31:51] Katie Dooley: Um. And he's, like, naked and holding a sling. Okay. Donatello was also a raging homosexual so.
[00:31:57] Preston Meyer: As opposed to a normal homosexual?
[00:32:02] Katie Dooley: Yes.
[00:32:03] Preston Meyer: He was just a very angry fella.
[00:32:05] Katie Dooley: I mean, yes, I don't know.
[00:32:09] Preston Meyer: This would have made a lot of people in the church very uncomfortable.
[00:32:12] Katie Dooley: Yeah. And I'll show you Donatello's David.
[00:32:14] Preston Meyer: Okay.
[00:32:15] Katie Dooley: Afterwards, and it would have made a lot of people in the church uncomfortable. Very different.
[00:32:20] Preston Meyer: A lot of people in the church are uncomfortable with Michelangelo's David. Just because.
[00:32:24] Katie Dooley: Did you know? I think we talked about this in an episode where they chipped off all the penises, and it's someone's job to now match the penises with the statues.
[00:32:31] Preston Meyer: Yeah, we talked about that.
[00:32:32] Katie Dooley: Yeah we did. Anyway, so that's why Cosmo is interesting. We're not an art history podcast, but if you like that stuff. The Medici's are bitchin.
[00:32:43] Preston Meyer: Yeah. For me, Donatello is a ninja turtle. And I know that all of the Ninja Turtles are.
[00:32:48] Both Speakers: Renaissance artists.
[00:32:49] Preston Meyer: Yeah, but no, for me, Donatello is just the turtle with the stick.
[00:32:55] Katie Dooley: Okay. Anyway, so the Corpus Hermeticum is the theological and philosophical text, and the name suggests that it is a collected writings on the subject when it is just actually a very small collection of treatises, kind of like the Bible.
[00:33:12] Preston Meyer: Yeah, it's not the whole of everything. It's just a handful. The first in the collection is Pomandres. There's a lot of different ways this word is pronounced depending on...
[00:33:28] Katie Dooley: Pomandries!
[00:33:28] Preston Meyer: Who you studied with, really. Um, and the great thing is that no matter how you're saying it, you're saying it wrong. It's actually a butchered remnant of an old Egyptian name that translates to the knowledge of Ra. Poimandres is the Greek name that's generally accepted, and it means man shepherd when it's forced into that Greek pronunciation. But that's just not what it is. It's the knowledge of RA, which makes perfect sense considering the subject matter. We're talking about the theology in Egypt. So that's what it is. Anyway, that's struggles, language, things. I nerd out over the language bits.
[00:34:27] Katie Dooley: And I nerd out over art history.
[00:34:29] Preston Meyer: But like a lot of hermetic writings, the Corpus Hermeticum is basically mostly a dialogue between Hermes and various others. In fact, another great text is the dialogue between Hermes Trismegistus and Asclepius.
[00:34:50] Katie Dooley: What a great name.
[00:34:51] Preston Meyer: Yeah, the book is sometimes called the Perfect Sermon, or sometimes just Asclepius, because this is who Hermes is talking to. Asclepius, if you don't remember, is the Greek god of medicine, and the rod of Asclepius is a fairly common symbol, with medicine of the snake around the stick different than the caduceus, which is.
[00:35:16] Katie Dooley: Two snakes.
[00:35:16] Preston Meyer: Two snakes wrapped around a stick with wings. But they're both pretty well used around the world. So Asclepius is another god that Hermes, a god, is talking to.
[00:35:28] Katie Dooley: Cool.
[00:35:29] Preston Meyer: Yeah. And this is part or at least part of it survived into the library. And so I've read it, and it is a trip. It's fairly apocalyptic.
[00:35:44] Katie Dooley: Cool.
[00:35:45] Preston Meyer: Um, it talks about how Egypt will one day be a desert. So here's the problem. The book was written after Egypt had been a desert for a long time.
[00:35:57] Katie Dooley: I was gonna say, hasn't it always been a desert?
[00:36:00] Preston Meyer: There are about 10,000 years ago it was in the monsoon path and so it was actually.
[00:36:06] Katie Dooley: Quite lush,
[00:36:06] Preston Meyer: Fairly green and nice. But it's been a desert for more than 4000 years. And these writings are not that old. They're not.
[00:36:18] Katie Dooley: What a prophet!
[00:36:20] Preston Meyer: Uh, but it's a great way of making it look old and presenting a prophecy that has already been fulfilled. So obviously, the next prophecies are going to be great. It talks about how the Nile will run with more blood than water.
[00:36:37] Katie Dooley: Don't like that.
[00:36:38] Preston Meyer: Right. That's gross. Some people will see this as being fulfilled in the days of Moses or in our just in future. You got options. And then, of course, there's this weird statement that says that when atheism pervades, the air will be unbreathable.
[00:36:56] Katie Dooley: Wow.
[00:36:58] Preston Meyer: I mean, atheism is getting more popular and we are working really hard to make our air unbreathable, but I don't think we're there.
[00:37:05] Katie Dooley: Causation does not equal correlation! Wait, correlation does not equal causation!
[00:37:11] Preston Meyer: Yeah, it's an interesting prediction.
[00:37:14] Katie Dooley: I feel attacked!
[00:37:15] Preston Meyer: It's an interesting prediction. But yeah correlation causation tricky nonsense. Yeah. What I found is really interesting is when I cracked open my book yesterday to go through and read Asclepius again, it starts with a talk about sex.
[00:37:33] Katie Dooley: What kind of talk about sex? Like birds and the bees or like porn?
[00:37:38] Preston Meyer: More birds and bees than porn. But he's, like, very serious about sharing fluids and sharing strength while sharing fluids and don't have sex in front of people who haven't had sex yet.
[00:37:52] Katie Dooley: Don't have sex in front of people, generally.
[00:37:54] Preston Meyer: Yeah, it's a weird talk.
[00:37:58] Katie Dooley: Can you please read it to your future child when it comes time?
[00:38:02] Preston Meyer: Uh, sure. I can say that that is a plan. And whether or not that happens, we'll see.
[00:38:10] Katie Dooley: Perfect. If not, I'll. I'll take on the role as Auntie Katie and be like, sit down, son. We're gonna have a talk about the birds and the bees.
[00:38:20] Preston Meyer: Well, and I mean, the way it's worded does actually make it fit as a perfectly reasonable text to read from when you want to have that first chat about the birds and the bees, even though it feels a little bit weird. Read it yourself before you read it to your kids.
[00:38:40] Katie Dooley: Okay.
[00:38:40] Preston Meyer: I think, but I think it's not wildly inappropriate to share with a ten-year-old. That's fine.
[00:38:47] Katie Dooley: Okay. Okay. All right. Um, and then the last book we're going to talk about today is The Kybalion. It was originally published in 1908, and it conveys the teachings of Hermes Trismegistus.
[00:39:02] Preston Meyer: As much as anything does.
[00:39:04] Katie Dooley: As much as anything does. It is published with the author credit to three initiates, but it looks like it was written by William Walker Atkinson, a prolific occultist writer known to have written under the false name under false names like Magus Incognito and Yogi Ramacharaka.
[00:39:27] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:39:27] Katie Dooley: Charaka. Excuse me. I got too excited. Yogi. Ramacharaka. Charaka. Ramacharaka.
[00:39:35] Preston Meyer: Charaka.
[00:39:36] Katie Dooley: Ramacharaka. I just I'm making it worse. Look at the audio on me trying to say it. Oh, boy.
[00:39:44] Preston Meyer: Uh, yeah. Good old Bill used a lot of false names to write a lot of different books. Kind of interesting. Uh, Yogi Ramacharaka is one of his more popular names. And Magus Incognito is my favorite.
[00:40:03] Katie Dooley: That's a great name.
[00:40:05] Preston Meyer: Right? Just the priest that doesn't want to be known.
[00:40:08] Katie Dooley: I love it. It also sounds like a really weird detective from the 1920s. Sure. Like, I want to write a novel about Magnus Incognito.
[00:40:18] Preston Meyer: Mhm. I thought it was nifty. The Kybalion on the title page says that its publisher's home base, the Masonic Temple in Chicago. So I couldn't find whether or not he was a Freemason or just well-connected in that community. I don't think it makes a big difference, but it's kind of nifty. And William Walker Atkinson was also really into Hinduism and yoga in particular, which we've talked about a couple of times already in our podcast as well. And this dude was a lawyer, that he passed the bar in Chicago and served as a lawyer all over Illinois while also writing a lot of books.
[00:41:05] Katie Dooley: Interesting. Good for him. Good for him.
[00:41:07] Preston Meyer: I don't think he was quite as prolific as, say, L Ron Hubbard or.
[00:41:11] Katie Dooley: R.L. Stine.
[00:41:12] Preston Meyer: Right but...
[00:41:15] Katie Dooley: We're big fans of Goosebumps here.
[00:41:19] Preston Meyer: I did read a lot of Goosebumps as a kid.
[00:41:21] Katie Dooley: Didn't we all?
[00:41:24] Preston Meyer: But he's got more than 100 titles under his belt.
[00:41:27] Katie Dooley: Wow.
[00:41:28] Preston Meyer: Most of which are still in circulation in collected works today, which is kind of cool.
[00:41:33] Katie Dooley: It was really cool. The Kybalion is where we get the condensed seven principles of Hermeticism.
[00:41:41] Preston Meyer: Yeah. It's interesting that people are so scared of the occult. If you read self-help or life coaching books, these concepts are going to show up. That's kind of The Secret. That was a big thing, what, ten, 15, 20 years ago?
[00:41:57] Katie Dooley: Yeah. I mean, it's still they're still reprinting it.
[00:42:00] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:42:01] Katie Dooley: With updated stories from like a belief standpoint. As the resident atheist, I don't hate this.
[00:42:09] Preston Meyer: Sure.
[00:42:10] Katie Dooley: And, you know, Bill was an occult writer, and we talked about astrology and alchemy and theurgy, but from, uh, occult perspective, this doesn't have anything to do with that. They talk about energy, which will chat about. And, you know, I don't really believe in crystals or Reiki, but we do scientifically know everything is made of energy. So I think there and when we get to the points, there is some truth to all of these points. But there's probably I mean, any religion, there's some truth to all the points. That's how they get you.
[00:42:48] Preston Meyer: Yeah. The things that we have in this book, they're not strictly classically hermetic ideas, but it adds to Hermeticism for anyone who's interested in them. And they have they've wormed their way into most modern hermetic thinking.
[00:43:09] Katie Dooley: So principle number one is essentially visualization. Or like Preston mentioned, The Secret. If you focus on wherever you set your focus to, you can manifest things into being. There's been a ton of research done on visualization. So while there are some wild stories in The Secret, there's one about a man who, like, willed his eyes to be better, to be 20/20. I'm like, ehhhh, there has. You know, there's lots of benefits if you're an athlete or a performer or goal setting to go through some visualization practices.
[00:43:48] Preston Meyer: This idea fits kind of nicely into Scientology, too. And Neil Gaiman, who I didn't know was a Scientologist until you told me he was, at least for a little while. He incorporates this idea into the creation and how gods come to be. In his book, American Gods, which I just finished reading and really, really loved.
[00:44:12] Katie Dooley: Nice. I think some of this like from a, I mean, lots of people, lots of coaches and things like that. Like Tony Robbins talks about visualization. There's also the I forget what it's called your something activating system in your brain. So when you buy a red car, all of a sudden everyone owns a red car.
[00:44:35] Preston Meyer: Oh, yeah yeah.
[00:44:36] Katie Dooley: Right. There's actually something I forget what it's called. Someone's gonna like at me for this. But there's something in your brain that, like, when you're focused on it now, you see it everywhere. So I think that plays. And it's an actual part of your brain that plays into this as well, right? Like if you focus on, you know, my friend always says she gets rock star parking all the time. She probably doesn't because she focuses on all the time. She's gotten rock star parking. Now she always thinks she gets rock star parking. She probably gets rock star parking more often because of it. Rock star parking being like, right outside the store. Yeah. Minus the handicap stalls.
[00:45:13] Preston Meyer: I get ya, because those handicap spots are always empty.
[00:45:18] Katie Dooley: Well, and you can't. Those are not rock star spots. Just to be clear.
[00:45:23] Preston Meyer: I mean, they are, if you want them to be.
[00:45:27] Katie Dooley: Wow. Preston, what are we to say? Like three minutes ago about being a dick.
[00:45:31] Preston Meyer: Don't be a dick.
[00:45:32] Katie Dooley: Yes. Thank you. Number two, please.
[00:45:36] Preston Meyer: Uh, correspondence. This is the whole as above, so below concept that the world is the same thing on different levels.
[00:45:46] Katie Dooley: That was an easy one.
[00:45:47] Preston Meyer: Yeah, I mean, we've talked about it so we can move on to the next one.
[00:45:51] Katie Dooley: All right. Number three is vibration. So good vibes. If you have a coffee mug or a notepad that says good vibes on it. And you're a devout Christian scared of the occult, you better smash and or burn it because it is a hermetic. It is a hermetic thing. Good vibes. So everything is energy. We know scientifically, everything is energy, which is where again, I find Hermeticism super interesting.
[00:46:15] Preston Meyer: But smashing the coffee mug that says good vibes is bad vibes.
[00:46:21] Katie Dooley: Fair. Maybe donate it if it's a problem in your world. Um, and everything is moving constantly. Like we know atoms are always moving, some faster than others, some looser or tighter than others. So the idea is that if you want to resonate at a higher frequency, you surround yourself with higher vibration things. So from like a practical perspective, like we all have that friend that's Eeyore and you never feel good after spending time with Eeyore. As cute as Eeyore is or your Eeyore friend. Um, so that's the idea, right? We like hanging out with people that are fun and positive and whatever. And when you hang out with those people, you feel more fun and positive and energetic. That's the concept there.
[00:47:09] Preston Meyer: Not that you should never hang out with Eeyore, but...
[00:47:12] Katie Dooley: You set boundaries around Eeyore.
[00:47:13] Preston Meyer: Yeah, Eeyore needs boundaries.
[00:47:15] Katie Dooley: Eeyore needs a lot of boundaries and your need personally needs therapy. You need to set boundaries around Eeyore. And Eeyore needs to see a therapist.
[00:47:26] Preston Meyer: Yeah. For sure. Anyway, next on our list.
[00:47:33] Katie Dooley: Oh, this episode, Muppets and Winnie the Pooh.
[00:47:38] Preston Meyer: At least Winnie he is in the public domain now.
[00:47:41] Katie Dooley: Ah heck yeah.
[00:47:42] Preston Meyer: I don't know if I'm sure Eeyore was in those first books.
[00:47:47] Katie Dooley: I don't know.
[00:47:48] Preston Meyer: I could be wrong.
[00:47:49] Katie Dooley: I don't think we're going to get sued for saying Eeyore.
[00:47:51] Preston Meyer: We're not going to get any trouble for saying it. No.
[00:47:54] Katie Dooley: Eeyore!
[00:47:56] Preston Meyer: But...
[00:47:57] Katie Dooley: Eeyore is gonna sue us for defamation. I don't need therapy.
[00:48:03] Preston Meyer: Ah. Truth is a perfect defense. Anyway, fourth on the list of these seven principles is polarity. That everything is the same thing, just on varying degree. A really obvious example of this is temperature. Both hot and cold are temperatures. Cold is just a lot less warm than heat is, but that's more or less the the basics of it. Everything's the same. There's also this idea that comes up the the phrasing is all truths are but half truths. Feels a little bit weird, but when you think about trying to communicate with somebody, you can present facts and you can present truths. And if you're trying to accomplish one over the other, the words you use are different. And there's... It's hard to present a thing in a way that encompasses all of the truth of a thing.
[00:49:06] Katie Dooley: I mean, this is kind of like the the phrase there's, you know, three sides to every argument his, hers and the truth.
[00:49:11] Preston Meyer: Right? Yeah.
[00:49:13] Katie Dooley: That's what I think of immediately.
[00:49:15] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Actually, going back to Neil Gaiman, he describes in American Gods, I think it was in the appendix or at the very end of the book, how if you want a perfectly accurate map, the only way to do that is to have the land itself, which, if you're looking for a map is functionally useless. So truth is a tricky thing.
[00:49:46] Katie Dooley: Number five is rhythm. So there, the idea is that there's an ebb and flow to life, and you can work with those ebb and flows to reduce the dramatic fluctuations of your life. So basically accepting that sometimes things will be awesome, sometimes things will not be so awesome. Sometimes it's summer, sometimes it's winter in Canada. If you're in Florida or something, lucky you. Uh, but to accept that, uh, waning and waxing will make your life much easier.
[00:50:24] Preston Meyer: And happier.
[00:50:25] Katie Dooley: And happier. So you can be a high-vibe person. Mhm.
[00:50:29] Preston Meyer: Mhm. Uh, next on our list, point number six is cause and effect that everything has a cause and an effect. Every cause has an effect. Every effect has a cause. And it's actually really important that these principles are laid out in that way, that nothing just happens out of nothing. Which is weird when you look at the theology of Hermeticism, that the God that is all, but also created all actually doesn't have a cause, but is the cause.
[00:51:07] Katie Dooley: Mhm.
[00:51:08] Preston Meyer: It's tricky.
[00:51:09] Katie Dooley: I like it.
[00:51:10] Preston Meyer: It's so tricky.
[00:51:10] Katie Dooley: I like it.
[00:51:12] Preston Meyer: But you can either be active and make things happen, or you can just be a vessel that is acted upon and that's going to not work out for you.
[00:51:23] Katie Dooley: Yes. So Hermeticism encourages that you are the cause in your life as opposed to being the effect of your life.
[00:51:30] Preston Meyer: And I've, I've heard a few religions use this as well that you need to be the agent, the actor, the one making things happen rather than being passive and receptive.
[00:51:42] Katie Dooley: Yeah. And number seven is gender. So I reworded this. But basically it's regardless of your genitalia or your gender identity. We both have masculine and feminine energies within us. This kind of ties into polarity and even rhythm, and that the goal is to find a healthy balance between your masculine and feminine energies.
[00:52:06] Preston Meyer: I'm pretty comfortable with my current balance. Not that nobody needs a little bit of adjustment, but I'm comfortable.
[00:52:15] Katie Dooley: You're not toxically masculine, so that's good.
[00:52:18] Preston Meyer: Right? Uh, yes. Toxic masculinity. The perfect red flag for somebody who is naturally a lot more feminine than they want to admit.
[00:52:30] Katie Dooley: Just embrace it. You'll be so be so much happier, right? You'll vibe higher. We don't have an episode name at the time I'm saying this, but I feel like it should be like good vibes and bloody tears. I'm kidding. That's a reference.
[00:52:49] Preston Meyer: Uh, Blue Jeans and Bloody Tears is a weird song.
[00:52:53] Katie Dooley: It is one of my favorites.
[00:52:55] Preston Meyer: I feel weird about it being one of your favorites, but I do have to go back to it fairly often.
[00:53:01] Katie Dooley: There's two great key changes and I just get way too excited every time.
[00:53:05] Preston Meyer: Man. Machines. A great evidence of some sort of alchemy.
[00:53:12] Katie Dooley: I like it. Speaking of alchemy, Preston.
[00:53:16] Preston Meyer: Yes. The three parts of the Wisdom of the universe that we talked about briefly before. Instead, we talk about later. Alchemy is the first. It's basically chemistry, but fancier. It has more power than the chemistry that we're familiar with. Alchemy is the power to change small things in the material world. Turning mercury or quicksilver into gold or lead into gold or mercury into silver.
[00:53:47] Katie Dooley: Iron into gold. I just read a book about that.
[00:53:49] Preston Meyer: Yeah, you've got honestly an awful lot of options. If your alchemy practices are legit, then you can turn base metals into precious metals, and that's kind of cool in theory.
[00:54:03] Katie Dooley: In practice...
[00:54:04] Preston Meyer: In practice, the heat that would be produced by changing atoms would be devastating. Not that it's impossible. We've proven that you can change one element to another. It takes a lot more effort than alchemy suggests.
[00:54:28] Katie Dooley: You can't get it hot enough.
[00:54:31] Preston Meyer: Uh, I mean, I don't know if you can produce the pressure to turn lead into gold. It's a little more complicated than that. There's also a nice little allegorical value to the principles of alchemy that if you are sensitive and thoughtful, you have the power to change a weak man into a strong one. There's some good value there. That turning yourself from lead into gold is the real goal.
[00:55:06] Katie Dooley: Steve Rogers. Mhm.
[00:55:10] Preston Meyer: The golden boy.
[00:55:14] Katie Dooley: Then we have astrology, which is of course the power to read the stars as the handiwork and message board of the gods. Um, so yeah, being able to predict the future and learn things about people based off of the stars.
[00:55:33] Preston Meyer: Not a thing I'm on board with there. I don't I don't even find allegorical value in it. But it's interesting to see that people have been studying the stars for so long and have put so much value into it.
[00:55:45] Katie Dooley: Um, astronomy, on the other hand...
[00:55:49] Preston Meyer: Astronomy is super cool and a lot of people get the two confused. It doesn't help that astrology is a word that means the study of the stars, and astronomy is the study of the stars for a different purpose.
[00:56:05] Katie Dooley: Yes.
[00:56:06] Preston Meyer: It's frustrating.
[00:56:08] Katie Dooley: Yep.
[00:56:10] Preston Meyer: And so many of the genuinely accepted sciences and with -ology, biology.
[00:56:20] Katie Dooley: Chemology.
[00:56:21] Preston Meyer: Okay.
[00:56:22] Katie Dooley: Physicology.
[00:56:23] Preston Meyer: Thank you for pointing out the perfect flaw in my scheme.
[00:56:28] Katie Dooley: Botanology. Yep. All my favorites end in -ology. You are correct.
[00:56:34] Preston Meyer: There's a lot of sciences that do end with ology. And thanks to you, I'm blanking on any of them.
[00:56:40] Katie Dooley: Herbology is a real science. Um, animal husbandology is a science.
[00:56:50] Preston Meyer: Astrology is legit as Scientology and that's where I'm stuck now.
[00:56:57] Katie Dooley: Oh, poor Preston, if you can think of an ology, that's a real science, because I sure can't post it in our Discord.
[00:57:05] Preston Meyer: Uh, well, that's what we get. When preparing for this, I didn't think I would need a list of legit sciences that end in -ology.
[00:57:15] Katie Dooley: You didn't think Katie was so smart on her science? Eh?
[00:57:23] Preston Meyer: Let's just move on.
[00:57:24] Katie Dooley: Human sexology. Medicineology. Sorry, I gotta stop. Uh, kinesiology!
[00:57:38] Preston Meyer: Yeah. That's real.
[00:57:39] Katie Dooley: There you go. Sorry. Theurgy.
[00:57:44] Preston Meyer: Uh, I feel bad that the only one that could come to my mind right away was biology. But anyway. Next on our list of the three parts of the wisdom of the universe, we have theurgy, which relies a little bit on alchemy and astrology, but is the powerful acts of God in the universe that is, a power that even people can actually wield, in theory, by union with benevolent spirits that grant this power to man, as opposed to making a deal with the devil and having a totally different power, which is still a reality within the principles of Hermeticism. Theurgy is a rather complicated bit because it's having the power of God, which is, of course, the dream for literally anybody who's really into Hermeticism, or even people who just aren't satisfied with their personal power, in this life, whatever your religious tradition is. But getting that power is a pretty tricky business. And that's part of the the pursuit of alchemy and astrology is to be able to understand and prepare yourself to wield that power, which is kind of cool. Like many other religious traditions, Hermetic Theology states that humanity has fallen from perfection and will live through cycles of reincarnation until the cycle is broken by obtaining and applying the wisdom of the universe. It's a pretty decent goal, a decent understanding that explains why people are so terrible to each other because we're fallen. It's a fairly common statement among religious traditions, especially from the west side or no, the east side of the Mediterranean Sea.
[00:59:47] Katie Dooley: Yes.
[00:59:47] Preston Meyer: Yeah. I don't know why I got my directions mixed up, but it is the east side of the Mediterranean Sea where this idea is really an important principle of religion.
[00:59:56] Katie Dooley: Yeah. To wrap up, I just kind of want to talk about how it connects to the occult. Do we think it's occult, especially when there's so much of it, I guess, hidden in plain sight in our everyday lives. What are your thoughts?
[01:00:12] Preston Meyer: I think that's a weird question. Okay.
[01:00:15] Katie Dooley: Um, did I word it weird?
[01:00:18] Preston Meyer: Maybe. Maybe that's the that's the problem. Um, generally when we use the word occult, we're talking about knowledge or power that needs to be hidden from the masses. And even though the literature of Hermeticism is fairly available, there's still secrets that are very effectively hidden. And so that makes it pretty easy to say that it is occult. And is alchemy fitting into that category of pseudosciences that is more, more recently applied to what we consider occult? I think fairly so. Astrology? Yes. 100%. But a lot of people look at occult as, oh that's dangerous.
[01:01:10] Katie Dooley: Right.
[01:01:10] Preston Meyer: Don't touch that and...
[01:01:14] Katie Dooley: Good vibes is pretty positive.
[01:01:16] Preston Meyer: I mean, I don't see any danger in Hermeticism. So if that's how you describe what is occult, I'm going to say no. But needing to have a conversation about definitions before talking about a thing is it's annoying... But it's a very real and necessary part of having religious discussions.
[01:01:43] Katie Dooley: Especially in this worlds. Yes. Um, when people toss around a whole bunch of things that are just wrong.
[01:01:53] Preston Meyer: Right? Like, you can have somebody say something to you and go, yes, all of those words that you have used in that order make a true statement. But the idea that you have behind those words and ideas is false. Or sometimes you have the the opposite, where it's like, I know that what you're thinking is right, but what you said is dumb. And there's everything in between those two extremes too.
[01:02:22] Katie Dooley: I love it. So Hermeticism, fascinating, influential and not dangerous.
[01:02:30] Preston Meyer: I think so. I think it's fascinating. Not that I've put in enough study to have a stronger grasp on it than I have, but I think it's cool.
[01:02:40] Katie Dooley: Okay.
[01:02:41] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[01:02:42] Katie Dooley: Sweet.
[01:02:42] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Speaking of alchemy, you should get your hands on some Holy Watermelon merch.
[01:02:49] Katie Dooley: Wow.
[01:02:51] Preston Meyer: It's not a great segway.
[01:02:53] Katie Dooley: No, it was really bad, but I'll. I'll accept it. He means it because it's like it will transform you from that lesser man to a greater man. If you wear a Holy Watermelon t-shirt.
[01:03:07] Preston Meyer: Oh, it'll make you. It'll take you from your current state into a billboard for the Holy Watermelon.
[01:03:13] Katie Dooley: A higher state.
[01:03:15] Preston Meyer: I like it.
[01:03:15] Katie Dooley: You will vibe higher. Wearing a Holy Watermelon t-shirt, oh boy.
[01:03:21] Preston Meyer: We've also got all kinds of other merch. You should check out our shop.
[01:03:25] Katie Dooley: Or if you. That's if you want to support us on an ongoing basis we also have a Patreon where for a small monthly fee, you can get early access and bonus episodes.
[01:03:37] Preston Meyer: Yeah, we're having some good fun with our bonus episodes.
[01:03:40] Katie Dooley: Yes! Also, check us out on Discord. We're building a great community and having some awesome conversations about religious studies, which is nice to see and have and questions and challenges.
[01:03:53] Preston Meyer: And our meme game is fantastic.
[01:03:56] Katie Dooley: Our mean game is chef's kiss. Mwah!
[01:03:58] Preston Meyer: Thank you for joining us.
[01:04:00] Both Speakers: Peace be with you.
