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Really wishing you well with this course, Daniel! I'll be there in spirit :)

I'm really intrigued by this content, but even more by your deeper hopes/goals for this and the entire program of exploration. I get there's a part of you that's just in the mystery of the expedition, but I'm curious if there is a larger context to regard your exploration within. You've critiqued the ungrounded, mushiness of how much of this plays out. Are you laying the groundwork for the emergence of these arts from a social engineering perspective? (I mean social engineering in the most positive way.)

Like reconstituting a new mythos, metaphysical science, with aligning/embodiment practices? It feels like much of this tradition is one example after another of individuals and groups doing just that. Sometimes I've wryly thought to myself that the most recent adoptions of Western Hermetic principles and practices — the "occult revival" or the "occult renaissance" which took place in the late 19th and early 20th centuries — were like a kind of Victorian Urban Shamanism.

For myself, I've generally aligned myself as part of a larger thought form that seeks to create an authentically global philosophy and practice of spiritual awareness and soul cultivation. This type of coursework and exploration feels like an essential part of that.

Peace... Immanuel

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See .....my comment below in answer to your question about occultism

For Terence McKenna's take, here's his talk "The Cult of the Surface"--

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlPJ4FqtgHk

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Yes! Great, Daniel! We have to find a way to use all of these sources of insight to spark humankind to coalesce into a critical mass and save itself. For the moment, how do we marry what you've learned about hermetic philosophy with what I've learned about our history (with language, rivalrous tribalism, and technology) to begin to put together a recipe for sparking folks? Because we've got the greatest motivator of all, desperation, working for us, now. See my writing assignment for your first class, "Awe Foundation." Shall I pursue it for Tuesday? Feel free to email me.

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Apr 21, 2023·edited Apr 21, 2023

Are you kidding, Daniel? Why is occultism dismissed today? Because of the materialist, logical-positivist mindset drummed into our heads for the last four centuries. What you see is what you get, a poverty-stricken experience of "reality" where the invisible is dismissed out of hand including the spirit realm and shamanic experience. That one-dimensional mindset gave birth through the demented greed of last-stage capitalism to direct our lives not for our benefit. But there's something else to understand here. We are being challenged by technocracy in a way that never happened before and occultism is irrelevant unless its dark side can be shown to be of use neutralizing the driving force turning us into "human" robots with brain implants, social surveillance systems, CBDCs. Can occultism rise to the occasion and deal with that challenge? If not it will remain gathering dust on the curio shelf of history.

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