Oh boy, okay, I might make one more post here. I think Tom has read
what I had to say about Hermetic correspondence in an earlier post and made some
claims, which just won’t stand up to critical scrutiny.
I’ll try and clarify my position because I think Anna and others might
be interested.
Just to start out. I don’t think Anton LaVey ever mentioned Hermeticism
or the Hermetic texts in his work. LaVey wasn’t a great fan of Crowley or any
of the other famous occultists/magicians, such as Levi or the Golden Dawn, etc.
They were just writers of sanctimonious, guilt-ridden gibberish. TSB was
designed to be simple and useful and not written in esoteric code.
Anna has provided some quotes from the so-called Philosophical Hermetica,
which includes the Corpus Hermeticum and The Ascelpius and a few others. These
books are just right hand path. There’s no way around that – they are
essentially right hand path works. I don’t think LaVey would have anything to
do with this sort of stuff and I don’t think any sincere Satanist would either.
The Hermetic text I am interested in forms a part of the so called
Technical Hermetica. The text I am thinking of here is called The Emerald Tablet
of Hermes. I have added a link for those who are interested.
http://www.alchemymuseum.info/library/Emerald_Tablet_Translations-Hauck.pdf
There is also an interesting recent YT clip by Dr. Justin Sledge, an esoteric
scholar, who has produced a clip about the difficulty of translation and
knowing what the tablet is actually about.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qa4woIz_Ag
This Emerald Tablet text is regarded as one of the cornerstone
documents of western alchemy.
The part of the Tablet I’m referencing is this: ‘2. That which is below
is like that which is on high, and that which is on high is like that which is below;
by these things are made the miracles of one thing.’
There are a number of different translations of this part of the tablet,
but the above is a fairly good one and they all tend to be similar I think.
The notion of a correspondence between ontological Being or rather
Becoming on the one hand, as the macrocosm (above) and a human being on the
other hand, as a microcosm (below) is pretty well established in western esotericism.
We are a reflection of a much larger Being or rather Becoming.
I think scholar Antoine Faivre’s basic definitions/principles of the
Western esoteric tradition still stands up to some extent, though contemporary
esoteric scholarship has sort of moved on from Faivre’s definitions/principles.
For ease of access and because I can’t be bothered typing it out from
Faivre’s book, here is a link to an interesting piece of writing, which unpacks
the definitions or principles which Faivre has documented. The comments around correspondence
are on page 11 at the top.
https://www.sunypress.edu/pdf/61439.pdf
Okay, this is how I use this Hermetic notion of correspondence in
regards to my interpretation of Satan and Satanism. I think will to power, anchored
to an unconscious subject, as the Other of scientific and right hand path religious
claims is the “instinctual energy” running through becoming. This is my macro
viewpoint.
I think that the unconscious or ID is the instinctual energy running through
a human being. This is my micro viewpoint. I don’t draw any distinction between
body and psyche or mind – they are really inseparable for me.
To live as a Satanist – to grow and to win, to overcome limitations and
boundaries, to magnify and to spread one’s will through as much of reality as
possible, to form and reform appearances, to transgress and destroy and rebuild,
is really a reflection at the level of an individual’s life, of a much larger
and profound process taking place across the whole of becoming.
I hope some of this gibberish makes sense – it can be very difficult to
put down in clear words.