Status Updates From Esotericism and the Academy...

In Corbin, Faivre and traditionalist school, we just see an anachronistic and narrow-minded misinterpretation of Aristotle through the lens of struggle sessions inherent to Christianity. Hence the situation where Platonism appears somehow esoteric to some people in counter-distinction to Aristotle, following the clichéd battle lines stemming from Platonic influences in Catholicism and chains of reactions to it.

In terms of the platonic-alchemical distinction (Plaotnic-Hermetic), evolutionism in German romanticism reflects alchemic traits and Jung reflects platonic traits, in terms of how they relate to their narrative of the nightside(ie. just what was rejected in the development of universalism/Christianity). What about evolutionism/apocalypticism?

"Arnold's historiography was based upon the concept of a radical incommensurability between "Athens" and "Jerusalem"(faith), which simply do not speak the same language and share no common ground; and the same logic of incommensurability governs Ennemoser's contrast between the discursive "daytime" consciousness of the brain and the experiential "nightside" consciousness of the soul"
Protestant struggle session..

apocalypticism vs. evolutionism, platonic vs. alchemy (Ennemoser) The former within Christianity, the latter between paganism. IN ADDITION, the complex of church/state, scripture/reason, ego/cogito.

It seems clear that in post-Enlightenment it is Marxism and Hegelianism which offers the pagan substrate for the "Catholic" iteration of secularity, whereas the reactionary rejection of it its protestant iteration, which explains perfectly why the right wing of the modern day is not counter-enlightenment in spirit (Kill All Normies etc) even though it aligns itself against the pagan elements of post-Enlightenment

*relation in the sense of opposition yet certain affinitude in players like Hegel and Marx, properly contextualized in some way like this

The historical relation of alchemical mindset to modernity

Dualism between the platonic and alchemical paradigm

Modern "occult" movement as derived from blindly attaching itself to a category based on purely Christian-universalist othering, whether for purposes of inclusion as in Catholicism or for condemnation with Protestants. Since the modern occult scene, including and especially the antichristian nature worship ones, are so deeply within how this concept developed in Christianity, they end up merely reproducing that

science and the modern occult are duplicated in each other, and in turn the paganism is duplicated in a new way

separation of the church and the state being commensurate with separation of reason and scripture, it is clear that the roots of mere instrumentalism and pragmatism are actually already present there. But what's incredible that this is ultimately all a consequence of the necessity of pagan appropriation in non-pagan universalism, where the predicament pointed to by horkheimer and co. is like a sub-sub-predicament

Freemasons and the science of architecture and their basis in actual stonemason guilds, who venerated geometry and architecture, very interesting

"As already noted by the earliest reviewers of Jung's writings on alchemy, "putting a modern psychological pattern over a system of thought based on totally different premises" is a perfect recipe for anachronistic misunderstandings"

!

It would seem modern esotericists and occultists are stuck in a similar mire along with the most dogmatic proponents of scientism, in working inside this occult-science distinction, where any scientific insight disappears into symbolism and such, and the science retains ignorance towards its unseen aspects under the guise of instrumentalism. It seems likely that our concepts are hopelessly muddled and need revision

Occult science as a unifying concept as related to Christian apologetics and later equally useful to anti-apologetics, but which in both cases is a distorting synthesis of all the pagan elements in the Church Fathers under the title of natural magic, which was approved in middle ages for things dealing with invisible forces and teleological concepts, and encompassed legitimate science.

The adjective occult, literally "concealed" vs. the order of nature-ideas!

Re: natural magic as a term "An author could stress his agreement that magic was just another term for natural philosophy, only to continue endowing "nature" with all the invisible forces and presences otherwise associated with the supernatural and the demonic" books like Mind is Flat certainly lend agreeability to this notion, and it also accords with my now-deleted review of the book, rather to my disappointment

"One can marvel at how long, and how effectively, this essentialist and totalizing discourse on "magic versus religion and science" has kept academics spellbound, as if they were trapped themselves in a magic circle they can't escape"

Deisidaimonia as undue fear of the gods, superstition as characterized by excessiveness of worship as something demonic that Christians imputed to pagans or protestants to catholics (and so on until our time, arguably).

"The "victory of science", then, was more than just scientific: to a considerable extent, the new science succeeded because it supported the theological battle against paganism" my own key words: Protestantism, enlightenment, atomization, introversion vs brash extroversion(keeping others out, purity politics vs keeping them below you, ideologically, in a sort of grand kingdom), mechanization.

"The great problem, of course, is that [neoplatonism] succeeded. This was partly due to the naivety of Christians, who used platonic terminology to convert the heathens, and thereby unwittingly welcomed the virus, which ended up infiltrating the very body of Christian theology" Universalism and its discontents...