what the hermetic are you?

[Guest]

Every seen that one hermetic deck by Dobson that looks so cool? Probably everybody...ever wonder what make it so Hermetic? Gosh i sure did….

 

Chances are most of us are using hermetic decks and don’t know it, the most of the rest of us just know they are.

 

A quick search of the internet about hermetic orders reads like a cool medieval story. Brotherhood of this, Brotherhood of that, Rosy roses, knights, and freemasons…. The beginning of the end is between Austria and France around 1800….by 1870 the old orders were collapsing just like the rest of the world around them.

 

Fun stuff for sure.

 

But what makes a deck Hermetic? Not so apparent...Hermeticism is in general application; alchemy and astrology used in conjunction with assistance from higher and lower plane entities (whom do you ask? ;)  )...what’s a hermetic deck? Just a deck so crammed full of symbols, religious emblems, and anything else that could correspond to anything else …?

 

Leaving the deck at this point is not hermetic, it’s all astrology. Great for divination and card games but not hermetic. By adding alchemy to these cards we get to hermeticism. Alchemy is all about understanding governorship and rulership...which ironically brings us back to astrology.

 

That’s basically all there is too it. The history is more fun. Everything changed when they discovered uranus in 1781.

 

There are clues all around, conveniently many are right in the decks we own.For instance Crowley’s Thoth deck has only 7 planets, and he appear to purposely switch earth and air in the minors. So this very serious magician using an astrology that was more than 100 years out of date and switching his elements….. He was obviously at odds with a great many people, he probably felt rather alone.

 

But what does all of this mean for us that use these decks? Nothing? Everything?

 

[EmpyreanKnight]

I have the Hermetic, and it fascinates me too! I haven't studied it in great depth tho.

 

Just a question tho: what do you mean when you said that Crowley switched the earth and air elements in the minors? The Swords suit in the Thoth has air as its element while the Disks has earth. In the Book of Thoth, he branded the Ace of Swords as the "primordial Energy of Air" while the Ace of Disks "pictures the entry of that type of Energy which is called Earth".

[Guest]

I have the Hermetic, and it fascinates me too! I haven't studied it in great depth tho.

 

Just a question tho: what do you mean when you said that Crowley switched the earth and air elements in the minors? The Swords suit in the Thoth has air as its element while the Disks has earth. In the Book of Thoth, he branded the Ace of Swords as the "primordial Energy of Air" while the Ace of Disks "pictures the entry of that type of Energy which is called Earth".

 

Thanks for catching that!! i really butchered that last bit. I made a small correction, but my thrust of it was he only changes back some things and leaves others?

 

it really really appears that for all intents and purposes the switch is made to just confuse people in general. If the tools we were given were not assembled properly, how well can they work? it's my assumption these changes are not made for the purpose of divination. These cards contain the discovered truths/ beliefs, their magic, their astrology, their alchemy and they don't want those shared.

 

if a six of swords from a deck where swords are earth means dissipation and Mastership of ones self, and a six of swords which is air from GD deck means earned success they both mean close enough to the same thing...yet they should mean something fairly different....but they don't. 

 

So they attach the same meaning to the same cards yet change where they would stand in the circle. My gut feeling is the use of suits in the first place is just to complicate these matters....it is not a very complicated matter to assign the meaning to the individual cards. easy enough that one can backtrack a bit and see a bit of what is taking place. Or be left totally in the dark because it doesn't make sense.

 

it is my humble opinion this should all make plain old sense. the tarot is a book that should just read through, and certain people have gone to great effort to prevent that.

[Guest]

wow, I was having a bad day ; I was about to start ranting, I came across something in a book, that made me think a bit

 

"It is not that one pack is better than another, but that each pack of tarot cards has been unconsciously modified by the philosophy of those who designed it..."  - somewhere in the Sacred Tarot

 

Hermetic cards have added layers to them that divination deck or regular Tarot may not have. Hermetic cards will include correspondences and rulerships that are specific to that hermeticist study of the Art.

 

Decks like the Dobson, Thoth,or the Brotherhood of Light  typically include correspondences for

 

Astrology, Kabalah, numerology, alchemy, biological functions, minerals/gems/, magical operations, religion, tone, time, etc

 

This makes the cards look really really busy usually. My guess is a deck with pips is probably not hermetic since the correspondences are not carried through from the majors to the minors on all of the cards.

 

 

 

 

[katrinka]

There are clues all around, conveniently many are right in the decks we own.For instance Crowley’s Thoth deck has only 7 planets, and he appear to purposely switch earth and air in the minors. So this very serious magician using an astrology that was more than 100 years out of date...

 

Have a chart done by someone who does modern astrology, and another by someone who does classical, and come back and tell us which one is more accurate.  ;)

[Guest]

it depends what kind of chart we are making. a Birth chart? Horary? Mundane? Weather? Synastry?

 

 

Modern astrology is going to inform you more about you and why you are where you are at. Modern astrology is about what you are thinking and how you are a co-creator of the world around you whereas  Classical or traditional astrology is going to tell you more about where you are going and what is going to happen. Horary and mundane (classical types) astrology is extremely accurate at describing the world around us, while natal (all modern astrology is natal centric) astrology is accurate at describing us in the world.

 

Crowley ignoring the outer planets tells me he is practicing a very specific astrology and that he is not looking inward he is looking outward.

 

 

[katrinka]

it depends what kind of chart we are making. a Birth chart? Horary? Mundane? Weather? Synastry?

 

Any.

 

Modern astrology is going to inform you more about you and why you are where you are at. Modern astrology is about what you are thinking and how you are a co-creator of the world around you whereas  Classical or traditional astrology is going to tell you more about where you are going and what is going to happen. Horary and mundane (classical types) astrology is extremely accurate at describing the world around us, while natal (all modern astrology is natal centric) astrology is accurate at describing us in the world.

 

Exactly.

I already know what I'm thinking, since I'm the one thinking it. ;)

 

Crowley ignoring the outer planets tells me he is practicing a very specific astrology and that he is not looking inward he is looking outward.

 

Actually, he was quite a psychonaut. I think he was thoroughly familiar with his inner landscape.

There are more effective ways of exploring that than perusing a chart with a list of personality traits.

[Guest]

I believe that in general, " ??? we don't know what we are thinking ???,"  is what actually takes place. 

 

Our thoughts take the path of least resistance in between the environment and our conditioning. Astrology does work, in any and all of its multitudinous forms, traditional, and modern, because the forces of our environment, our conditioning, and the planets are greater than our ability to remain aware and in control of the world around us,

 

studying hermeticism, I think, helps remedy this by forcing me to learn the united oneness of all things and  forcing me into states of awareness when i would normally not be.

 

tarot cards are more fun than astrology, all that math makes it seem so serious....and there are no pictures...

[MollyCat]

This is an informative thread.  Does anyone know a book or an article which describes

the various systems and philosophies which underpin the range of Tarot decks?

 

I'd like to understand more about this if only to get rid of my own misconceptions.

[Court de Gébelin]

The "range" of Tarot decks is huge!  The only work I know of that even comes close to covering them all is Stuart R. Kaplan's, four volume "Encyclopedia of Tarot."  Of course many lesser (in scope) works cover a lot, and many more cover at least the Marseille and Rider-Waite cards.  My advice would be to start with a book like "Seventy Eight Degrees of Wisdom," by Pollock, and go from there.

[EmpyreanKnight]

This is an informative thread.  Does anyone know a book or an article which describes

the various systems and philosophies which underpin the range of Tarot decks?

 

I'd like to understand more about this if only to get rid of my own misconceptions.

 

Umm wow. There are so many Tarot traditions to speak off - there's the English school, the Spanish school, the Continental Tarots, etc. - and these even have subcategories. I'd be interested too in a resource that can define and contrast these. I can't imagine how positively magisterial it would have to be to be able to discuss them in adequate detail.

[Guest]

This is an informative thread.  Does anyone know a book or an article which describes

the various systems and philosophies which underpin the range of Tarot decks?

 

I'd like to understand more about this if only to get rid of my own misconceptions.

 

Umm wow. There are so many Tarot traditions to speak off - there's the English school, the Spanish school, the Continental Tarots, etc. - and these even have subcategories. I'd be interested too in a resource that can define and contrast these. I can't imagine how positively magisterial it would have to be to be able to discuss them in adequate detail.

 

i like "umm wow" that sums it up so well, doesn't it?

 

Court de Geblin, if I may suggest, perhaps begin by researching the tarot that is associated with the name you chose. I used  a more practical approach in that I chose the decks I would study according to what I wanted to do. Tarot decks are built around a specific study of some sort. For instance the Thoth deck would lead you into studying classical astrology and Kabbalah. RWS would require study of esoteric Christianity/Martinism and Kabbalah. The Brother hood of Light decks are built around our current western astrology that is in use.  Wiccan decks and Pagan decks are rather specific for their teachings.

 

keep in mind the older decks are composed of rather obscure occult doctrines that can be a maze to wind through.

 

"hermetic" is really just telling us that the cards (or what ever is labeled as hermetic) is secret or sealed (occult) and secondly it is comprised of various separate studies. An average deck is a hermetic deck in that it will combine astrology, alchemy, numerology,kabbalah, and psychology into a single deck of cards.

 

 

[Scandinavianhermit]

Just as the words 'kabbalistic', 'rosicrucian' and 'occult' have been used, and are used, in more narrow senses, as well as in very wide and stretchy senses, so is the word 'hermetic' used in more narrow senses and a wider sense. The drawback of using a wider definition of any of these words is, that the meaning of these words become too all-encompassing, blurry and incomprehensible. I suspect, that each of these words has sometimes been used as a selling-point, rather as a well-defined description of a content.

 

In the most narrow sense of the word, 'hermetic' refer to the system of thought found in:

• Corpus Hermeticum,
• Asclepius,
• the hermetic treatise Discourse on the Ogdoad and the Ennead, found in Nag Hammadi (Codex VI),
• the Hermetic prayer of Thanksgiving found in Nag Hammadi Codex VI and in Papyri Græcæ Magicæ III.591-611
• the Stobæus Fragments

Original Hermeticism is a fusion of Greek-speaking Middle Platonism (Neoplatonism came later, and Greek was spoken in a wider geographical area than today), Judaism, and late ancient Egyptian religion. Whether there is also a Christian influence is a matter of debate. Though the building blocks of early Hermeticism certainly are pre-Christian, the fusion process seem to have occurred in the first and second centuries CE. It would be nice to see new discoveries uncovered.

 

Then, there is what is sometimes known as Middle Hermeticism. The famous Emerald Tablet belong to this category. Hermetic literature from this subset of Hermeticism emerged from the dark ages until the renaissance, mainly in the Arabic speaking world.

 

Neo-Hermeticism refer to anything that call itself 'hermetic' from the renaissance on. It is a heterogenous bricolage of ancient Hermetic, Middle Hermetic, Rabbinic-Kabbalistic, Christian Kabbalistic (from the 1450s on), alchemical, astrological and Occultist-Kabbalistic texts, thoughts and practices, and there do not exist any standardised Neo-Hermetic system of thought. Rather, there exist several different Neo-Hermetic systems of thought and practice. Church of Light (founded 1932) and the inheritors of/splinter groups from the Order of the Golden Dawn (defunct 1903) are some of them.  

 

 

 

 

[Misterei]

2 hours ago, Scandinavianhermit said:

In the most narrow sense of the word, 'hermetic' refer to the system of thought found in:

• Corpus Hermeticum,
• Asclepius,
• the hermetic treatise Discourse on the Ogdoad and the Ennead, found in Nag Hammadi (Codex VI),
• the Hermetic prayer of Thanksgiving found in Nag Hammadi Codex VI and in Papyri Græcæ Magicæ III.591-611
• the Stobæus Fragments

I'm very narrow.

To me it begins and ends with Ἑρμῆς ὁ Τρισμέγιστος [Hermes Trismegistos] and the Corpus Hermeticum.

It relates to so many ideas ... I can never think about Hermeticism without Ancient Theosophy. The ideas span the Alexandrian world [India, Persia, Central Asia, Arabia, Levant, Egypt, Greece]

Your comment about Emerald Tablet being an Arabic school of thought was interesting. I've ignored that text in my narrow-mindedness ... but perhaps I'll give it a read. As an astrologer the arabic works fascinate me as the bridge between India and Greece.