The Hanegraaff Leap — Over No-Free-Will Eternalism; the Fixed Stars transformative revelation
2nd episode today:
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2022/07/14/idea-development-page-14/#Egodeath-Mystery-Show-episode-200
Companion set of voice recordings for 1 week:
Egodeath Mystery Show episode 199 – Sphere of Broken Stars (August 3, 2022)
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2022/07/14/idea-development-page-14/#Egodeath-Mystery-Show-episode-199
https://youtu.be/RocoS-vOGFk&t=495s –
8:15 – Hanegraaff’s cosmology leaps over and omits or doesn’t recognize the sphere of the fixed stars.
He doesn’t realize that the glorious “hypercosmic”[sic] Ogdoad is the sphere of the fixed stars, Fate, Heimarmene.
A footnote in the music chapter is the lone single place where he says “fixed stars”, to state that he doesn’t know which sphere number to put them at:
“Whether the fixed stars should be included [with Saturn] or should rather be associated with the Ogdoad remains an open question for me.”
– p 294 note 114 in Hermetic Spirituality
This is not an open question. The sphere of the fixed stars is the Ogdoad, and he is confused when he says the 7 planetary spheres are the whole cosmos.
The cosmos includes the sphere of the fixed stars, which is Heimarmene, which is the Ogdoad, which he correctly says is the 8th sphere.
This is elementary basic cosmology. He doesn’t state how this is supposedly an open question.
He wishes to protect the Ogdoad from negative Heimarmene, in his zeal to give a “thoroughly positive” reading.
He neglects to integrate Heimarmene (fixed stars; consciousness of fatedness) in his conception of rebirth.
This is the Hanegraaff leap – over the sphere of the fixed stars, trying to jump over Heimarmene (the no-free-will, non-control experience), which IS the Ogdoad.
When you read his book, write “8” next to the word ‘star’ and ‘astral’, and then his leap over and his dissociative splitting of the 8th sphere into two unaccounted-for spheres (of negative stars and of positive rebirth) becomes apparent and unconcealed, made perceptible.
The Egodeath theory 
he better cut back on his non-drug entheogens
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In the video you share, he states that, “They said it can’t be put into words, and he says that many times. He gets hung up on that and might need to use that as a crutch. And I wonder if his ability to speak several languages inadvertently prevents him from understanding metaphor. When he gets to the eighth sphere he doesn’t know how to put the fixed stars there and instead puts souls there because he doesn’t understand and experience metaphor of experience.. And that is why he needs non-drug entheogens….because they speak literalism.
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now let me try to do voice dictation and recording my experimental hook up all at the same time and I don’t know it’s crazy but.
on a voice recording today episode 199, I mentioned that this is a standard idea, 8th sphere is where souls are, at highest.
I’m not super familiar with the ideas of souls as stars, but star equals soul when the elect person dies bodily their soul becomes a star in the fixed stars.
I’m not very familiar with that mystical analogy idea, but definitely sometimes in mythology stars equal souls.
But yes I was shocked every time he says that you leave the cosmos, which he defines as the seventh planetary sphere, Saturn, I expect him to say “you then go to the sphere of the fixed STARS”, but instead he shocks me by saying the word SOULS.
But I don’t think that’s his innovation. I think that first of all, the idea was stars, in history; and then later, they said “let us place the souls at that level of the stars”.
His book does observe sometimes the relation between body soul and spirit per cosmology levels, and in the book he comments on the interesting pattern that ancient writers sometimes lumped together body and soul as the lower level, and only the spirit is really high outside the eighth sphere of the stars.
Only the spirit gets to move beyond the cosmos; the soul does not get to move beyond the cosmos – and this seems to be pretty standard in history of Mythology analogy.
I discussed this somewhat in today’s recording: Episode 199, Egodeath Mystery Show episode 199 part b and/or c.
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I think this app has some way to edit my comments, but I don’t see in this particular view there is no way to clean up my previous comment, through edit.
I think that might be somewhere else in this app user interface.
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since i cant edit my comment in this app, corrections:
“now” i experiment
expect him say “sphere of the fixed stars”, but he says “souls” instead – ok, not wrong; but he would HAVE to say, “souls ie the sphere of stars/ constellations/astral”, you can’t just say “the level of souls” and fail to mention that that is the level of *stars*, which is the eighth cosmic sphere – he somehow has souls there, but no stars – this doesn’t make any sense. it is perfectly fine saying “you reach the level of souls” — but you have to say, first and foremost, it is the level of stars!
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there is the odd half-baked oil and water kind of literalism of the exoteric esotericist: a weird flavor of figurative literalism like a literalist High Christology, a contradiction in terms.
Lest I sound like my motive is only to criticize Hanegraaff, For one thing —
yes I disrespect translation between one clueless exoteric language of French translated into clueless as exoteric English and clueless exoteric mistranslation of ancient Greek, when what really matters is to translate among esoteric referents and analogies.
I would emphasize he does a good job – to be charitable to him – he rightly points out the self-contradiction, apparently a playful self contradiction of the ancients, who are hypocrites because they say in their writings that “gnosis cannot be written” and that “now that you have gnosis, you are commanded by the God to write it down carved in stone in the Egypt Temple steles.”
he does a fairly sophisticated critique of this idea, the negative claim, and he rightly raises these questions, like you raised he questions, this claim that “gnosis cannot be written down”
I love how he says, what I always say, is that *nothing*, no experience, can be “adequately expressed”… there is nothing special about non-dualistic experiencing just like any field of science you need a domain optimize conceptual vocabulary or are you saying that electrical engineering knowledge is easy and can be adequately conveyed??
what about other human emotions – and Hanegraaff rightly makes this objection.
also, language does not produce an altered state like psilocybin – nor should we expect it to!
nor should we expect language to somehow “adequately convey” – whatever the word “convey” means, “adequately convey” any experience…
what is this even asserting?!
it is a meaningless assertion; it is meaningless to assert that language “cannot adequately describe” experiencing.
what do you mean “adequately describe”??
this is an empty meaningless assertion
if you say that nondual gnosis perception “cannot be adequately conveyed by language and scientific diagrams”, then I would retort that *nothing* can be adequately conveyed by language and scientific diagrams.
but in fact, I assert and I emphasize – against everybody else – in fact, appropriate language and appropriate scientific diagrams *can* convey and adequately describe, as adequately as anything in any complex experiential domain, the non-dual gnosis experience – you just have to do a good job of it, that’s all – just like *any* field of science.
no field of science or experiencing is easy to describe.
the periodic table in chemistry – that’s not easy – maybe you guys , mystics, are just doing a poor, sloppy, lazy job, and need to TRY HARDER! As I proved by my successful 1-paragraph summaries of Transcendent Knowledge. [Addendum: most people don’t WANT to understand; they aren’t sincere but are trying to AVOID enlightenment. Developed this point in Egodeath Mystery Show episode 200.]
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I didn’t get the connection between star and soul..thank.you for that good information. He mentions about translation over time and how that changes meanings. He mentions the Christian scribes and states that they took the information and changed the meaning for the purpose of Christianity beliefs. So that’s another example of not understanding metaphor because he is unable to see the similarity in themes through metaphor….
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I don’t think Hanegraaff intentionally means to discredit authentic entheogens. He believes what he believes. He is very tight with words and restricts their usage by holding onto the confined space of definition. Add that to restricting words from being able to express knowledge through experience and you get a bright mind shadowed by inexperience.
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Yes I think Hanegraaff knows that entheogens absolutely blow away alleged “other methods”, no contest at all – which never were really supposed to induce the altered state – but he’s just using mostly ill-advised strategy involving pretending to elevate other methods (really just altered/state activities) – which I resent. Few people are hardline “emperor has no clothes” like I am.
It’s hard to say if his pretextual strategem/ ploy is actually harming the repeal of Prohibition, or is separating academics further from truth than they already are.
Wouter Hanegraaff is under constraint to profess poppycock; life always has limits restricting what we’d like to assert publicly.
His book is a major advance from very benighted misunderstanding & from a hostile misreading eg by Reformed theology Establishment & by modern scientism & natural science/ Philosophes circa 1700.
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I don’t understand how someone who has a lifelong passion for teaching
and writing about historical practices wouldn’t want to preserve their authenticity. And yes, we’re all restricted from what we’d like to assert in public. But it’s better just not to write or talk about it rather than being two-faced.
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Here is a my recording of doing voice dictation to write a detailed comment above, and then reading aloud the above comments with comments, and guitar hookup experiment as the motivation for doing this recording. It’s ill-advised to post link here, but experimentation trumps all else:
Download for 1 week starting Aug 3 2022:
https://we.tl/t-XMF3l9Ieqt
Casual recording (no show Intro), but still packaged as Egodeath Mystery Show episode.
“Ep200 You Have to WANT to Explain.mp3”
– wetransfer site has a Preview in-browser. 1:04:13. The first 5 minutes wasn’t quite the guitar hookup I wanted – didn’t notice, b/c sounds as if intended.
Here on desktop I do see Edit on my comments as well as your comments, unlike on mobile app.
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Good information!. Isn’t it a bit of contradiction when Hanegraaff restricts authentic enthrogens in his teachings and writings to students and peer who all live within a liberal and tolerant environment?.
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Oddly enough and beyond the Hanegraaffs and any concern regarding entheogens, and ever since I wrote about Hanegraaff being two-faced by promoting non- drug emtheogens, the following words keep coming up hitting within like a brick, which are: “Before the rooster crows twice, you will deny me three times,” making me wonder if we all aren’t being two-faced. Thank you as always Michael for your very hard work in paving the way by clearing it of debris.
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in my book review I plan to emphasize that the fault comes from academia and 30 Hanegraaff has done a massive amount to repair the errors of academia he shows that how very backwards they are and he does as much as he is allowed and permitted
his moves are ridiculous but he is in a ridiculous situation and he is forced to write a bunch of nonsense that doesn’t hold up to two seconds of critique – people acting as if cave meditation and imagination exercises is going to produce the same result as two bowls of cubensis ten times is ludicrous,
and it’s not his fault – it’s academia is just that benighted.
he has already hinted that academia is struggling badly to try to keep up with the popular research that is not hidebound he has said that (specifically in Jay Kinney’s Gnosis journal and Park Street press/ inner traditions/ bear and Company publisher) the term gnosis is correctly understood, by default, as simply a given, in the popular books, understood obviously to be higher altered state experiencing –
but academia is to dumb and hidebound to grasp or admit that Elementary point that’s now considered self-evident to the popular audience.
so academia is struggling to keep up , and in fact I have completely broken away not constrained and hamstrung and heavily censored.
how can academia possibly make any progress & keep up with popular scholarship when there is this intensive 100% censorship
they are literally not permitted to assert and they are shaking in their shoes like trembling wusses paralyzed in fear of, that I can write it and they’re not allowed to write it, and they put it on my shoulders and they make it my responsibility to say what they are not permitted to say,
such as the allegro position which should not be called the allegro position, combining Esotericism and ahistoricity and entheogens, and
they would be instantly unemployed if they asserted the truth, and that proves academia is illegitimate and incapable of writing the truth.
Hanegraaff is forced to use the old stratagem of asserting ridiculous alternatives to the truth so that everyone can recognize how ridiculous this assertion would be he cannot be treated as a sincere writer he is forced to write what he knows to be false
and we can see now this conflict of interest that makes everybody all these meditation proponents try to misrepresent meditation as if it’s function is to induce the altered state rather than simply be an activity a mental activity to be done within the entheogen-induced altered state
and no I am certainly not going to give an inch to his the worst idea of any academic ever to treat the word entheogens as if it’s broader than the word substances
100% no most certainly and emphatically the word entheogens is definitely not 1 mm broader than drug plant chemicals – hard NO!
i am speaking on behalf of the entire field of entheogen scholarship, when I say:
academia is not allowed to broaden the word ‘entheogens’ to mean non-drug entheogens, these ineffectual, too weak, bogus pretended “other methods that ‘can'[meaning don’t] produce… ” that do not produce the same intensity as heroic doses, eg two bowls of cubensis 10 times, that is powerful & effective in driving out egoic freewill premised, branching-world premised control thinking.
this historical imagination invents non-drug entheogens as an avoidance strategy to protect egoic thinking, producing the usual failure of the field, merely exoteric esotericism. …
i posted on www the posting “ayluthentic esotericism is entheogenic esotericism” 8 years before his 3x cited article that invents by imagination non-drug entheogens , 8 years before hanegraaff’s article.
… so it’s a miracle that Hannegraaff is permitted to write as much truth as he is, given how 100% hidebound, paralyzed, and censorious mental shackles that academia has.
Regarding his severely malformed cosmology, I am going to concretely tell readers:
every time he writes the word ‘stars, astral, zodiac, cosmos, or heimarmene’, write what I write next to it, which is the number 8 and the word ‘Ogdoad’. Then the Hanegraaff leap/gap becomes apparent, perceptible, unconcealed.
This forces Hanegraaff to bring back in the stars where they belong in the Ogdoad rather than where he tries to put them under the Hanegraaff sweep them under the Hanegraaff rug floating nowhere in outer space
I am only undecided on how many quotes I should quote from him where:
he contradicts himself constantly calling the cosmos the seven planetary spheres
he leaps over the stars, and then he says “now that we have left the Astral zone,…”
he says, “let us leave and travel beyond the seventh planetary sphere of Saturn and then move outside of the cosmos to the Ogdoad. now that we have left the Astral Sphere…” – an indirect assertion, word-switching game to sneak out no-free-will / heimarmene out from his precious “hypercosmic”[sic] transcendent Ogdoad level 8.
in an indirect way he writes
quotes that prove that he is trying to conflate the Astral Sphere with the sphere of Saturn in order to remove the stars & heimarmene/ the no-free-will transformation gate from the level of the Ogdoad
this doesn’t make any sense by any measure
you can’t remove the stars from the Ogdoad , they are level 8 by definition, this is a cosmological Given: the stars (equals Heimarmene) equals the Ogdoad
this is universally held by everybody in the cosmos except for Hanegraaff who claims its an open question
what the f
you can’t do that
on what basis
the book leaves us with the grand unanswered question from Hanegraaff
there is no justification for the book not addressing this
he has no excuse for footnote 114 that says “it’s an open question for me whether to associate the fixed stars with Saturn or the Ogdoad ”
on what text basis, which of the Hermetic Texts allows him to do this?
which of the Hermetic texts allows him to remove the stars and Heimarmene from the Ogdoad?
The book has to state this and he has to explain exactly why footnote 114 why is it an open question
how can it possibly be an open question
how can the Hermetic text possibly leave HannahGraff saying that it’s an open question –
in what way do the hermetic specific texts allow you to say that “it’s an open question of whether to jam the stars into the planet Saturn, jam the fixed stars into the moving planets
this doesn’t make any sense
from which specific Hermetic Tex does Hannah graph get this strong assertion that he’s very strongly asserts all throughout the book that the cosmos equals the seven planetary spheres but he never ever says whether the cosmos does or does not contain the fixed stars
and then he always every time he always asserts that the Ogdoad is outside of the cosmos
then where exactly please be specific where exactly are the fixed stars
he definitely implies that the fixed stars are inside the seven planets spheres
this doesn’t make any sense
but he definitely implies that but he never discusses it properly and straightforwardly
and I shall explain to you here right now exactly why IMarmany and the fixed ours is the very most important most pivotal thing and the level at which the rebirth occurs, the highest cosmic level which is 8 the fixed stars not 7 Saturn.
he says that a rebirth occurs in Saturn planet level 7.
this numbering has a gigantic gap regarding the fixed stars
he assigns level # 7 to Saturn & he assigns 8 to the Ogdoad which he says is outside of the cosmos , and he places the stars nowhere except in a mealymouthed indirect way he roundabout definitely implies that the stars are at Saturn.
he’s striving, he wants badly to put the stars into the Saturn level 7, you can see him really wishing and trying and wanting to do that, placing the fixed stars (heimarmene) into the planet wandering level – he quietly SNEAKS the fixed stars (& thus heimarmene/fatedness) out from the Ogdoad 8th level, [suppression/dissociation/repression in his “thoroughly positive” spiritual cosmology 🦄💨🌈] down into the Hebdomad 7th level.
how does he put the stars at Saturn
what hermetic text just justifies him limiting the cosmos to only the seven planets and not the stars
but then he implies that includes the stars
he is a self-contradiction and he doesn’t explain his hermetic text basis for making that self-contradiction and that vagueness about where in the F do you put it stars and where are you put the fixed stars
the level of the fixed stars is the most important level and he leaves it out and he doesn’t explain what texts make him leave it out.
and now he makes me resort to reading the Hermetic texts myself to answer the question, the most important question what he didn’t answer:
are the fixed stars inside or outside the cosmos?
David Ulansey clearly says that the fixed stars are level 8, which is the cosmos, and the stars are the cosmic boundary, highest level of the cosmos.
this basic Hanegraaff gap is regardless of the word cosmos and how you define it
it is the simplest cosmological given that the level above 7, Saturn, is level number 8, which is the fixed stars, which is the Ogdoad.
that’s true regardless of whether you call that “the highest level of the cosmos”.
this is all elementary and completely contradicted by his vague book
there is just no defending this, there is no justification for his failure to discuss why he says “it’s an open question”
what the hell are you talking about, it’s not an open question, that’s the most closed question in the world
your precious Ogdoad *is* Heimarmene!!
the Ogdoad is the eighth level as he says and Ogdoad is the fixed stars as a cosmological elementary / primitive basic given (the level of heimarmene).
you cannot remove Heimarmene from the Ogdoad and place it nowhere in your cosmology
this is the most important level of the cosmology is the fact that highMarmany is the fixed stars is Ogdoad is the cosmic boundary
this is all elementary how can he f this up and leave us in a trainwreck massive confusion right at the most important level.
as the ego death theorist I rely on my star by which I sail by
my key central point of reference the most important thing in the world is the level of the fix stars which is no free will/ hiMarmany / eternalism and he leaves it out
how am I supposed to map my ego death theory to his spiritual cosmology when he just presents us with a muddled inarticulate self-contradictory mess, right where I need this specific point of reference: the heimarmene fixed stars cosmic boundary 8th cosmic shpere Ogdoad 🤬😱🤯😤🤨🤷♂️🤦♂️
I have my book review of his gnosis of his dictionary of gnosis already docked him two stars for omitting entheogens.
I am not docking a star for falsely alleging that imagination/ meditation “may”[read: doesn’t] produce “spectacular alternative states of consciousness” as intensely as heroic doses of two bowls of cubensis ten times as shown in folio page f134 of the Paris Eadwine Canterbury Psalter, showing a branching-message mushroom tree with right-limb balancing, hanging, and God’s sword of mystic-state death, next to a banqueting initiation scene.
I would consider restoring the fifth star if he will restore the stars to his cosmology and explain exactly why does he consider it “an open question” of whether to associate the fixed stars/heimarmene with Saturn level 7 or with the Ogdoad level 8.
he has some major central explaining to do of how it is that the negative Experiencing of Heimarmene no free will block universe eternalism relates to rebirth and transcending the cosmos like David Ulansey’s hypercosmic cosmology in Mithraism book and articles.
You can’t just put the stars nowhere and then pretend that you didn’t do that.
It is a firm requirement given the nature of the spiritual cosmology which is the subject of this book it is a firm non-negotiable requirement that you have to explicitly state and integrate the fixed stars level ( IMarmany ) into your spiritual cosmology
you can’t just try to stay silent and place these stars off to the side in an earlier chapter which is placing them nowhere in your numbered levels Of your spiritual cosmology which is based on numbered levels
this Hanegraaff Leap doesn’t fly
you are not left with a coherent cosmology at all
right where the most important level is, heimarmene/the highest cosmic sphere, of the fixed stars, which every single cosmology diagram agrees on this one thing , there are seven planet spheres, and then the sphere above that is the stars
how can he not get this right and call it “an open question”
what Hermetic text support that
please explain
now I have to go do my own research on this central key important question which he just waves aside in footnote 114.
not in an articulate way but at least he does state explicitly:
I can’t figure out where to put the fixed stars in my spiritual cosmology level numbering 1 through 10.
how in the Hermetic texts can this possibly be described as “an open question”?!
you’ve got to place the fixed stars (heimarmene) somewhere.
where exactly do you place the fixed stars and heimarmene?
His spiritual ascent cosmology stumbles right at the central most important level, the pivotal point of reference, the stars by which we sail.
My Egodeath theory of Transcendent Knowledge requires knowing this.
I cannot map my theory to your spiritual cosmology if you won’t include the fixed stars in your cosmology.
you need to integrate Heimarmene into your spiritual cosmology.
and unless you have some hermetic texts to the contrary, you can start by placing them where everybody places them – of course obviously, it’s an elementary/ basic/ primitive cosmological given, that the fixed stars – which are heimarmene/fatedness – go in the Ogdoad.
do you have some hermetic text that presents some different cosmology than this, or some reason in the texts to deviate from the common standard shared cosmology that everybody holds to?
so you need to straighten out your sht, get get your story clear
he needs to revise his story
it doesn’t work, it’s not coherent, it’s not articulated of how heimarmene/no-free-will relates to rebirth
which I will tell you right here summarized according to the ego death theory which is left to fulfill the gap that he leaves
in footnote 114 he says it’s an open question
well the ego the theory has to step in and provide the summary sentence here to try to repair his gigantic inconsistent gap
it’s called the Hanegraaff Leap where he leaps from Saturn planetary sphere to the what he calls the Ogdoad that he claims is outside of the cosmos and is above the level of the fixed stars/heimarmene,
where in the hell does the fixed stars/ heimarmene go
this is the Hanegraaff Leap
I can’t, as a theorist I cannot map to this broken system that’s broken right at the key level #8 which is heimarmene.
he never states where do the fixed stars level of sphere stand, what number, what level number is that in relation to where rebirth occurs.
he has some major, major explaining to do here!!!
I really am almost forced to doc a star, not for the entheogens, but for his failure – this is a cosmological trainwreck!
on what hermetic Texts basis can he try to place the stars nowhere and get rid of heimarmene from his cosmology and place it nowhere?!
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Review: Spiritual cosmology missing the most-important star level
****
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