Companion episode of Egodeath Mystery Show – https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2022/07/14/idea-development-page-14/ –
Episode 204 – Ugly Cosmology Mapping (Aug 8 2022) – available 1 week
Reasonably Irrational: Theurgy and the Pathologization of Entheogenic Experience
Wouter Hanegraaff
Video of conference presentation, with transcription
https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2021/04/19/video-reasonably-irrational-theurgy-and-pathologization-entheogenic-experience
“Charles Stang. … the director of the Center for the Study of World Religions here at Harvard Divinity School. … our year-long and wildly successful series on Psychedelics and the Future of Religion, co-sponsored by … the Esalen Institute, the Chakruna Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicines, and the RiverStyx Foundation.”
surrounded by utter silence while watching the planetary constellations. She won’t see them just as physical planets. She will see them as deities
Wouter Hanegraaff, conference presentation “Reasonably Irrational: Theurgy and the Pathologization of Entheogenic Experience“
Hold up – what are “planetary constellations”?
Hanegraaff is intent on covertly silently moving the fixed stars (carrying heimemene) down from standard level 8 down into planetary wandering stars levels 1-7. What Hermetic texts justify this imaginal construction?
Last night’s Egodeath Mystery Show was productive, I went through hits on ‘astral’, ‘zodiac’, ‘stars’, and lots more. https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2022/07/14/idea-development-page-14/#Egodeath-Mystery-Show-episode-203
I’ve marked up the phrases in the book Hermetic Spirituality where provably, Hanegraaff’s project is to SILENTLY, covertly remove the fixed stars (and their heimarmene/ no-free-will/ block universe eternalism) from Level 8, and jam them covertly down into Level 7 (Saturn) by using the word ‘stars’ covertly silently redefined to mean planets.
Hanegraaff introduces massive confusion and conflict with the standard mystic cosmology levels.
He should say explicitly what he’s doing, and he should quote Hermetic texts to justify doing this or to explain why the location of the fixed stars remains an open question for him and explicitly explain how he strategically writes-around that knowledge gap.
On my show last night I realized: if you don’t state where the fixed stars are per Hermetic texts, then BY DEFAULT, they automatically definitely go in Level 8, as a cosmological given – after all, they have to go somewhere.
You can’t just keep Level 8 and then silently omit the stars (and their heimarmene payload/referent).
Of course I mean the REAL stars, not his deceptively misused word ‘stars’ by which he means the 7 planets.
Without his quoting texts, I have to provisionally conclude that he’s forcing a misinterpretation and producing a technically incoherent model.
He’s trying to sell us a cosmology with no fixed stars, only the 7 wandering planet-stars.
He assigns heimarmene/fatedness to Saturn (Level 7) at the highest; he says Level 8 is outside the heimarmene-ruled “cosmos”.
In the 3 main cosmology brands, Level 8 is explicitly where heimarmene and fixed stars are – his model is in severe conflict.
Hanegraaff is trying to fabricate a unique cosmology to exaggerate Theurgy’s differences from and distance from the other brands of Transcendent Knowledge: the shared standard cosmology of Gnosticism, Mithraism, and Christianity.
He can’t quote David Ulansey’s work, because the problems would be unavoidably obvious.
He makes outright self-contradictory statements regarding the highest location of heimarmene in relation to zodiac and Level 8 and 9.
A spiritual ascent cosmology without the fixed stars. His book doesn’t mention “fixed stars” except to say it’s an open question whether they are placed at Level 7 or 8.
He mentions ‘zodiac’ 3 times, and assigns Heimarmene with its daimon possession and fatedness at Level 7 or 1-7, the planetary spheres, not “the Ogdoad” (which is a fancy, magic-word, obscurationist way of saying cosmology Level #8).
To the extent that Hanegraaff permits the cosmos to have a zodiac of constellations of fixed stars, he demotes it to a planetary level, 7.
All extremely quietly and hard to perceive him doing this; it’s parenthetical half-stated remarks in footnotes, infamous Footnote 114: .
We need to read everything into this, and read it in a worst-case reading.
It’s evident he’s not just narrowly talking about music theory: all throughout his speeches and writings, he silently places the fixed stars and the constellations of them nowhere and tries to cover up his cosmic spiriting-away of the stars by covertly silently redefining the word ‘stars’ to mean the 7 planets, only.
Saturn … Whether the fixed stars should be included or should rather be associated with the Ogdoad remains an open question for me.
Wouter Hanegraaff, footnote 114, page 294, Hermetic Spirituality
candidate for scholarly quotes Hall of Shame?
He clearly doesn’t know what cosmic rug to sweep the fixed stars (with their heimarmene payload) under.
Hanegraaff Misuses Words, Introducing Confusion
This confusing, highly non-standard misuse of words such as ‘stars’ and ‘constellations’ runs throughout his writings and speeches.
IN MY BOOK REVIEW, HE FORCES ME TO DEFINE THE WORDS ‘STARS’ AND ‘ZODIAC’ AND ‘CONSTELLATIONS’!
To helpfully point out to customers/readers that he silently, very confusingly REDEFINES these words, just like he tries to redefine the word ‘entheogens’ to mean its exact opposite: “entheogenic religion/practices (sensu lato)” – translation: non-drug psychedelics.
Did you know that cave meditation & imagination exercises produce intense loose cognitive ego death, cybernetic seizure loss of control, forcing a mental model transformation, with the same efficacious intensity as heroic doses of Psilocybin?
Except they don’t – so all his assertions about “other, non-drug methods can produce” are falsehoods.
The Egodeath theory 
He has his hands in so many things, quality is bound to suffer. He has tremendous opportunity but his restraints prevent him from being progressive where it means the most.
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