Alchemy & Philosophy Reading Group
Hermetic Exploration
Know Thyself is the core precept of all mystery schools throughout the ages and the ancient mystery schools had an extremely sophisticated understanding of human behavior. Carl Jung recognized this and drew heavily from the teachings of the lineage of King Salomon and Hermetics.
The mystery school tradition utilizes two primary tools. The first is adding healing light to the energy structure to clear old patterns and ignite latent potential. The second, is to then replace these maladaptive patterns with incorruptible teachings, meaning that the teachings come from an enlightened mind and have been proven to produce positive results.
These teachings are called keys because they open doors to new understandings that produce better ways of being.
One of the Hermetic keys which Dave Lanyon has distilled into a precept is: "Belief should be the conclusion of discernment, not the premise of it."
Put into practice, this idea is central to studying in a mystery school, which is to approach the ideas with an open mind while testing them out before adopting them as a belief.
Therefore, in this series we will:
1. read a selection of work devoted to a specific topic.
2. find and highlight the keys (there are many!) and compare our results
3. we will test the concepts out in our own lives
YOU ARE NOT PERFECT THE WAY YOU ARE,
But You Are Getting There
by Sovereign Ipsissimus Dave Lanyon
The Corpus Hermeticum is a profoundly symbolic body of wisdom containing insights from an enlightened mind, many of which elegantly anticipate key aspects of human psychology millennia before the emergence of modern psychological thought. Carl Jung recognized this depth and drew extensively from Hermetic philosophy in his exploration of the psyche and the process of individuation.
This book, written by Dave Lanyon, distills complex Hermetic principles into practical and accessible teachings on self-mastery and mastery of the world around us, presenting them in a way that is both clear and directly applicable to everyday life.
Chapter 1 - Clarity and the Sacred Focus: The Main Thing