related book review by me
https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/RO5N2HMBGSY1O?ref=pf_ov_at_pdctrvw_srp
about the book:
Cosmology and Fate in Gnosticism and Graeco-Roman Antiquity: Under Pitiless Skies (Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies, 81)
Nicola Denzey Lewis
https://www.amazon.com/Cosmology-Fate-Gnosticism-Graeco-Roman-Antiquity/dp/9004245480/
Errata – agghh correction, thanks to super-study Erik Davis’ wording in Led Zeppelin IV – the planets are astral/stars: they are 7 wandering stars spheres, vs the sphere of the fixed stars.
uses “soul” in much too broad sense for levels 8-10. soul is limited to level 8.
I plan the structure of the book review to be by chapters. And then emphasize cosmology lvls 1-10 throughout the ch’s.
Companion voice recording for 1 week starting August 5, 2022: https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2022/07/14/idea-development-page-14/#Egodeath-Mystery-Show-episode-201
Exoteric Esotericism through Non-Drug Entheogens
You are predestined and fated to decide to read this book; there’s no choice; the path for you is decided; destiny planned out; it’s written in the stars; you have no control over your attention [quote early pages about if scholars aren’t in control of their minds, not able to direct their attention]
To Do Put Here List of Quotes with page numbers
i need a text file filled with quotations from the book
There are many great cool phrases re: no-free-will heimarmene non-control in this book, praying for rescue from above, all that negative stuff he kicks out (repressess & dissociates) from his numbered “thoroughly positive” cosmology levels.
Davis Led Zep IV Book Is Eternalism-Only Cosmology
Erik Davis cites my “no-free-will transformation then full transcendence” theory and misstates: “level the 8 fixed stars is called the Empyrium , where the Elect reside”- writers crash and burn at the transcendent levels, need to go back to school.
no-free-will is not highest cosmological spiritual level.
I posted to the web about “entheogenic esotericism”, 8 years before his 2012 article Entheogenic Esotericism: “Authentic esotericism is entheogenic esotericism”
[put in the relev chapter section on non-drug entheogens, he cites 3x. out of 5x the word entheogens is in this book
todo: read pages indexed as ‘psychoactive’]
I posted on the w-w web the posting “Authentic esotericism is entheogenic esotericism” 8 years before his 3x cited article that invents by imagination non-drug entheogens , 8 years before Hanegraaff’s EE article.
Psalter the Stars and also Beyond the Stars
Eadwine’s Great Mushroom psalter folio page f134 shows a both feet off ground beard/mystic hat super-enlightened guy.
beyond the stars = part of us, the spirit, is beyond no-free-will block univ cosmos.
beyond heimarmene/eternalism; qualified possibilism-thinking when tightcog baseline returns after Hanegraaff’s intense mystic altered state ends.
the below is from the long comment thread on my Broken Stars posting – https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2022/08/02/hanegraaffs-bizarre-dissociation-of-fixed-stars-from-ogdoad-8th-sphere-to-prevent-heimarmene-from-association-with-divine-ogdoad-level/ –
The fault comes from academia and that Hanegraaff has done a massive amount to repair the errors of academia.
Hanegraaff shows that how very backwards they are and he does as much as he is allowed and permitted.
His moves in constructing via historians imagination non-drug entheogens, egged on by Erik Davis who he favorably cites, 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.
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.
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-like position, combining Esotericism and ahistoricity and entheogens
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.
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
Here are quotes [x, x, x] 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?!
The Egodeath theory 
Based on your insights of Hanegraaff and the situation with academia, it’s
understandable that it becomes hard for him to align the fixed stars with the 8th sphere as long as he promotes non- drug entheogens. How can he promote authentic entheogenic altered state experience, which he would be doing, by placing the fixed stars in the 8th sphere, and so he gets stuck at that point.
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