Have a topic, need an author....
Posted: Thu Dec 31, 2015 4:40 am
I want to know if there's an author that comes to mind for any of you whose writings are a particularly good land bridge between properly occult/esoteric philosophy and modern existentialist philosophy - someone whose done well at translating the ideas and terms from esoteric into exoteric as well as doing so without watering it down in the middle or leaving the traditional western mystery tradition too much for new agey ideas.
I'm talking to a very rational, generally agnostic and materialist, group right now and it's triggering a desire in me to bridge the gap between the highly empirical forms of philosophy and the esoteric forms. I don't just want this for them but to also help me break the concept/culture/language bubble that I still feel like a lot of my own occult knowledge is trapped in (more on that further down the thread).
I feel like that linkage should be out there. On one hand I know there's a certain set of philosophies and philosophers that strongly tend to base themselves in atheistic and existentialist philosophies, ie. wouldn't touch the esoteric or occult with a ten-foot pole and, much like the Modern World took Isaac Newton's calculus and physics to throw his alchemy out the window they strip-mine what they can use from the ancient philosophers with the same variety of modern ivy league temperament. On the other hand, the esoteric and occult has too much real value to have no one trying to create a professional cross-dialog between the two.
For instance I know that there are angles and approaches into this where it's plain as day, even from the most existentialist standpoint, that there are things worth exploring from the occult perspective. A great example - we deal with the subjective in much more dynamic ways, bridge our subjective ever further outward, and our able to have our subjective operators handle spools of concepts that most people couldn't fathom reaching from that perspective. An example of something really practical; I've had impulses to create certain internal crisis ritualistically and in private that have caused major movements within my subconscious and they were changes I made in myself that I don't think any psychologist could have done for me or anyone else, nor perhaps would have even known to recommend. Even without doing any really advanced magic - I'm doing things with my own brain, already, that popular psychology would say are impossible. I'm also very curious to see just how much I can learn about the world, objectively, by adopting the subconscious habit of anthropomorphising things around me, weaving the dream and symbol language into my life. My guess is that there has to be LOTS that's plain as day, as rational as can be, but we can't synthesize the connections without playing along with subcosnscious logic first and then connecting backward by standard reason and logic.
Is there any writer or philosopher, one foot in modern academic philosophy and one foot in proper occultism, who handles what I'm looking at addressing in sort of a central language or attempts to redeem the value of the occult (ie. the baby in the bathwater) for the existentialist? While it would be a great tool to help me communicate my esoteric ideas to atheists and existentialists without tripping alarm bells I'm even more interested in finding such an author just because, on account of my own journey, this is a join point between philosophies that I want to learn a lot more about. For as much as I enjoy reading people like MP Hall, the GD greats, and the like there's also a sort of occult bubble where so much of it seems to be written for-occultists-by-occultists, preaching to the choir, and I'm looking for some bridgework to help give my esotericism some broader logical outreach and not feel like it's cramped in a stale or isolated chamber of Rosicrucian, GD, Thelemic, etc.. thinkers. The last part would also be invaluable to me because for as much as I can handle dealing with esoteric terminology as a slog through esoteric books I really think I'd feel better if I could anchor these concepts to non-esoteric terms, not only for stability but something again to help the ideas breath more open air in my life, cross-pollinate with everything else I know, and for the ability to read even great existentialist philosophers and see the esoteric value in what they're saying. In simpler terms I really want to take the gloves off and the barriers down, to have a real sense of the continuum between me performing a ceremony and me doing arithmetic at work or using analytical problem-solving skills in my day-to-day life.
Hope I didn't ramble on that too much - it's late and I need to get to sleep. Any advice would be appreciated.
I'm talking to a very rational, generally agnostic and materialist, group right now and it's triggering a desire in me to bridge the gap between the highly empirical forms of philosophy and the esoteric forms. I don't just want this for them but to also help me break the concept/culture/language bubble that I still feel like a lot of my own occult knowledge is trapped in (more on that further down the thread).
I feel like that linkage should be out there. On one hand I know there's a certain set of philosophies and philosophers that strongly tend to base themselves in atheistic and existentialist philosophies, ie. wouldn't touch the esoteric or occult with a ten-foot pole and, much like the Modern World took Isaac Newton's calculus and physics to throw his alchemy out the window they strip-mine what they can use from the ancient philosophers with the same variety of modern ivy league temperament. On the other hand, the esoteric and occult has too much real value to have no one trying to create a professional cross-dialog between the two.
For instance I know that there are angles and approaches into this where it's plain as day, even from the most existentialist standpoint, that there are things worth exploring from the occult perspective. A great example - we deal with the subjective in much more dynamic ways, bridge our subjective ever further outward, and our able to have our subjective operators handle spools of concepts that most people couldn't fathom reaching from that perspective. An example of something really practical; I've had impulses to create certain internal crisis ritualistically and in private that have caused major movements within my subconscious and they were changes I made in myself that I don't think any psychologist could have done for me or anyone else, nor perhaps would have even known to recommend. Even without doing any really advanced magic - I'm doing things with my own brain, already, that popular psychology would say are impossible. I'm also very curious to see just how much I can learn about the world, objectively, by adopting the subconscious habit of anthropomorphising things around me, weaving the dream and symbol language into my life. My guess is that there has to be LOTS that's plain as day, as rational as can be, but we can't synthesize the connections without playing along with subcosnscious logic first and then connecting backward by standard reason and logic.
Is there any writer or philosopher, one foot in modern academic philosophy and one foot in proper occultism, who handles what I'm looking at addressing in sort of a central language or attempts to redeem the value of the occult (ie. the baby in the bathwater) for the existentialist? While it would be a great tool to help me communicate my esoteric ideas to atheists and existentialists without tripping alarm bells I'm even more interested in finding such an author just because, on account of my own journey, this is a join point between philosophies that I want to learn a lot more about. For as much as I enjoy reading people like MP Hall, the GD greats, and the like there's also a sort of occult bubble where so much of it seems to be written for-occultists-by-occultists, preaching to the choir, and I'm looking for some bridgework to help give my esotericism some broader logical outreach and not feel like it's cramped in a stale or isolated chamber of Rosicrucian, GD, Thelemic, etc.. thinkers. The last part would also be invaluable to me because for as much as I can handle dealing with esoteric terminology as a slog through esoteric books I really think I'd feel better if I could anchor these concepts to non-esoteric terms, not only for stability but something again to help the ideas breath more open air in my life, cross-pollinate with everything else I know, and for the ability to read even great existentialist philosophers and see the esoteric value in what they're saying. In simpler terms I really want to take the gloves off and the barriers down, to have a real sense of the continuum between me performing a ceremony and me doing arithmetic at work or using analytical problem-solving skills in my day-to-day life.
Hope I didn't ramble on that too much - it's late and I need to get to sleep. Any advice would be appreciated.