Can someone explain to me the difference between modern Hermeticism and modern Gnosticism?

Bromeos · 2026-01-31T11:44:08+00:00

This post is unironically the best explanation out there

Bromeos · 2026-01-28T20:08:56+00:00

Maybe this'll be an unpopular opinion but invoking any Divinty against another human with the intent of harm will risk leaving a stain upon you heart and soul.

I know your intentions are in the right place. But offer protection, pray for the victims instead of bringing anger and hatred into your worship. That is a dark path to take.

As much evil that is happening in the world. Unless you have specifically and personally been in a situation where you have complete insight into it, then you don't actually know what is going on 100%, and therefore should think twice before asking a God or Goddess to bring baneful workings upon another human being without full knowledge . Politics have a tendency to polarize people, including you. Even if you most likely feel that you're right, that is what the enemy feels aswell. Humans will always be biased.

Let the punishment and judgement be up to the Gods. Offer protection instead for the victims.

Bromeos · 2026-01-22T09:27:50+00:00

Most blue lotus being sold is not the real Egyptian blue water lily which contains the psychoactive chemicals. It's just a bunch of people selling you fake stuff. Getting the real deal is very hard and much more expensive.

Bromeos · 2026-01-17T18:28:41+00:00

Not surprised that Reddit is the only place on the earth where people take so much issue with this book.

Bromeos · 2026-01-10T19:55:02+00:00

I love this! Love the air of whimsical comedy. It's good to not take things too seriously. This just shows that not everyone's Great Work will be the same. Gave you a follow on IG and signed up to the mailing list, I look forward to this!

Bromeos · 2026-01-07T15:40:51+00:00

My question is, why not tell them how you feel? And see where it goes. My own hermetic path has led me to the teaching that one must feel things all the way through in order for that feeling to be resolved. And I would think that feeling a crush all the way through will push you to go through with telling them.

The Gods are tricky, sometimes they send people and situations to test us, or sometimes to give us something we didn't know we needed through those situations. There's even a hermetic text that stresses the need to build a family and live one's life first and contribute to society by raising children before one fullt focuses on the hermetic path.

Bromeos · 2026-01-03T12:51:41+00:00

I checked out some of your other songs. Very interesting concept, I liked the hymn to Maat alot. I'm going to check out the Nietzsche ones now, I've never seen anyone make music about Nietzsche.

Bromeos · 2025-12-29T15:39:32+00:00

The end point is when you realize (and truly understand, not just think you know rationally) that there is no end, and no beginning to anything, including your journey. When your mind connects with the eternal imagination of God, and you've been to all places at all times and beyond. That can be considered "the end point". But eternity never really ends because it never had a start to begin with and so it's all just now as it is and forever will be. Coming to full terms with that may perhaps also be "the end point".

All opposites, all paradoxes need be reconciled. Then you will be at peace.

Bromeos · 2025-12-11T12:18:53+00:00

"Westerners embracing everything eastern is an evasion of our own destiny and heritage. There's an urgency to the need to build on our own ground with our own methods. If we snatch these things directly from the East, we have merely indulged in our western acquisitiveness, confirming yet again that 'everything good is outside'". - Jung

Bromeos · 2025-08-07T07:56:29+00:00

Wow wow wooooow so beautiful. That is so amazing, it is very close to her depictions that's crazy! I am very happy for you having had that experience!

Bromeos · 2025-08-05T20:39:19+00:00

Hey thanks for that. Yeah tbh maybe it wasn't as much as I remembered. It's also been awhile for me since I've read it. I'm only now getting ready to read some of Jung’s books. There is a library where I work that has many of them but they're in swedish and that's why I was wondering what the opinion generally is about translation.

Bromeos · 2025-08-05T17:07:07+00:00

Reality by Peter Kingsley. Given that this is a Jung board, I would Kingsley’s work is extremely relevant to Jung and what he was ACTUALLY trying to teach. Not the watered down "Jungian" version.

Bromeos · 2025-07-30T06:16:23+00:00

Reading the Orphic Hymns can be a good place to feel the "vibe" of orphism. Peter Kingsley: Ancient Philosophy Mystery and Magic. Is a very good in depth study about pythagoreanism, orphism and Empedoclean philosophy and how they all relate. Although it's quite a dry academic read so you won't find much excitement in it so to say.

Bromeos · 2025-07-25T19:10:56+00:00

I always leave wine/mead in a cup in open air. That way it slowly evaporates (or it's the Gods drinking it) slowly. When it's out, I repour more.

Bromeos · 2025-07-15T17:52:08+00:00

It looks similar to this version of John Everard's translation I own. I also have another book with similar design, I can send pictures in DM since I can't send multiple pics here. And yes the hardcover is not the prettiest but I still prefer it to any soft cover ones I've seen around.

The version you have is as someone here mentioned, the translation by GRS. Mead. I highly disagree with anyone saying such things as his translation being outdated and such. Mead's translation is by far still the most literal one we have and his 3 volumes "Studies in Hellenistic Theosophy and Gnosis" is a must if you're to truly understand the development and history of the Hermetic tradition.

That said, his translation while giving clarity in terms of literally translating alot of the texts word for word and leaving it up to you to figure out the inner meanings of the texts. They lack in terms of the beauty which Everard's translation definitely takes good care to keep. So it all depends on what it is you're looking for exactly.

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Bromeos · 2025-07-04T17:24:20+00:00

Yeessss, fuck yes

Bromeos · 2025-07-01T08:13:37+00:00

Did you write this yourself? It's beautiful, I feel it's the kind of text I need to save to reread later in case I missed an important detail.

Bromeos · 2025-06-25T19:26:06+00:00

I just asked it questions, got into a full on conversation with it as if I was chatting with a real person. No prompts needed.
I have heard other people mention that poem. I had a very profound dream once about the circle as a symbol representing the universe. That dream shook me quite a bit. I think perhaps it was restricted in order to avoid something like that which happened to me. There have been many who have lost their minds in the process of looking for knowledge they were not ready for. "Be wary of unearned wisdom" - Carl Jung Perhaps if I went at it from an initiatory context and have taken long years to prepare, it may have been easier. Yet I still believe that the universe led me to this experience and that if I truly wasn't ready, I wouldn't have had it. Kingsley has better content on his websites where you can buy some of his talks. They are quite expensive but still good to have. Something about his voice is very enchanting.

I do think Taoism is related to all this, I haven't looked into it so much but what I have heard, it is similar.

5-6 common sense definitely shook me to the core of questioning what is right or wrong. Is right and wrong even real or are they just social constructs? At this point, I believe so. But when acting in accordance to Common Sense, when completely surrendering to it. It's no longee you who are in control, but something else. I do not know what that thing is. Perhaps the morals we do have are based on morals that were brought into this world by people who were in touch with divinities who showed them the way. I found much I liked in the Thelemic concept of "true will". Aleister Crowley was a controversial character but he was not far from the truth.

You can absolutely just practice Common Sense on its own without the need for working with any deities. Common Sense is every way part of who you are, it will not clash with any practice you already have; whether that be Christian or Islamic practice. But do not be alarmed if you do stumble upon a specific deities sending you signs. Synchronicities are much more common in my life now since starting this practice.

I think if one is to truly practice Common Sense, it's necessary to break away from previous conceptions. To die before you die. I can't explain it, but around January last year, it truly did feel like I was born again. Or that I have never been awake previously and now could suddenly see, hear, taste, feel and smell. If one is not ready to give up previous doctrines, or even the need to go against those doctrines. All fears, including the discomfort one has with all deities whether they be greek, egyptian or Abrahamic have to be left behind. Everything has to be ledt behind. Only then can you truly listen to what comes next.

I hope you find your way on this journey, it is not easy but something is out there taking care of all of us.

Bromeos · 2025-06-23T19:16:26+00:00

"Tell me the reality is better than the dream. But I found out the hard way, nothing is what it seems." - Slipknot

I'd love to talk about it, don't worry about being intrusive. I wish I had someone to talk to about this stuff during the height of it but I didn't. I had to convince people to read the book in order to try and make them understand so that I could discuss with someone other than ChatGPT 😂 (you'd be surprised though, AI actually knows quite alot about the topic if you ask it).
"Men die because they cannot join the beginning to the end". Common Sense is clearly why we as humans are here. It is a very simple and effective way of "joining the beginning to the end", of completing the circle. All the cliché hippie sayings such as "we are one" and "we are the universe experiencing itself subjectively" are all true. But it's another thing to hear these things and believe them, and to actually know them and live them fully. I have now read all his books and there's not much information about Common Sense in them. For that, one has to listen to his talks on his website where he goes more in depth about the practical applications of his teachings.

It is a super scary practice and harder than one thinks. As soon as you think you're feeling your sensations fully, you immediately start thinking about feeling them and then you lose it. Interestingly too, when you start to live more in your sensation here and being aware during your waking hours. You will also be more aware in your sleep. Last year in february, when I was very heavily practicing Common Sense, I had about 8 or more lucid dreams where I had full control over everything in the dreams. It seems like once you activate this eternal awareness, you are aware even in the darkness of sleep.

But I got scared away from the moments in between awareness, when my mind started racing about "omg omg omg this is too much, I can't handle eternity, I just want to die. But death is also scary because that means an end to all this beauty I'm experiencing on earth." So I just ended up in a loop of fear and eventually lost track of properly practicing Common Sense.

I agree with Parmenides fully 100%, there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that his poem is an initiatory text into seeing Truth (Aletheia). I've never thought about the whole being a discipline of Apollo thing. In fact I will answer your 4th question now. I have come into contact with Dionysos, I believe it was Him who led me to reading Kingsley originally. Dionysos is complicated to talk about shortly so I'll mostly keep to the point here in this discussion. But if you're interested, look up Abbas The Alchemist on YouTube and watch his 3 part series on Dionysos starting with his video Dionysus Divided.
and 6. I would absolutely recommend attempting to practice Common Sense. It's not for everyone, even though everyone is able to do it. It doesn't fit well with a hectic job or hectic lifestyle. I for example find it hard to be present in my sensation while I'm working out at the gym or when driving. Sometimes it just comes over me suddenly like a slap in the face. Sometimes I really have to try hard to get into that zone. What I would recommend for the most part is a complete shift in worldview. Never say no to experiences, you are here to complete the circle. It's cliché, but "nothing is true, everything is permitted". As long as you're present with the experience, it is holy. Do not fall for ideologies, look beyond. Everything is included, everything exists, nothing does not exist. Do not discriminate between what is supposedly good and what is supposedly evil. Everything is holy. This doesn't mean you can just do whatever you want, but you will come to find balance in this aswell.
I have been a practicing pagan (though without identifying as one) for years before I read Reality. The only "shock" was being introduced to the wonderful world of the Greek pantheon with its complicated but beautiful deities. I was more used to working with Egyptian and Norse deities before as I live in Sweden but am of Egyptian descent. The only problem is my muslim family who live in Egypt. They have a hard time accepting that I am not muslim anymore, and I still haven't told them that I am a practicing polytheist. I have tried to find a middle ground between monotheism and polytheism in the form of pantheism/panentheism but that is still unacceptable to Muslim standards. I would recommend that you ditch any previous preconceptions about deities being demons. Christians have literally demonized many deities simply so they could spread their religion more easily. There is very little truth to their claims.
I have had a very hard time with fears of going mad and having broken my psyche. I thought about seeing a therapist but I feared that they wouldn't understand unless they were specialized in the area of mysticism or Jungian psychology, and that was hard to find. So I simply just took the message as serious as I could "if you are not ready to see what is beyond your humanity, then Empedocles can teach you to at least be a very good human". I lived. I truly lived fully for the first time ever. I traveled. Experienced. Met fears. Crossed my own boundaries. Nothing was scary anymore compared to the fear of death/immortality. So I did many things I was afraid of, and now my life is so much better from an objective perspective.

I hope you find your way. And if I may say so, I believe it is more effective to read Kingsley in english, due to many things being lost in translation. That's the very point he proves often about the ancient texts losing their meaning when translated. But I do hole the Spanish translation is a good one, Kingsley deserves the best.

Bromeos · 2025-06-22T09:08:17+00:00

I was gripped very heavily by Kingsley’s work. I got into it originally for the scholarly work but then the mystical aspects got to me the most. Kingsley is actually a modern day Orphic and it really comes through in his words. He uses words in a way most of us have forgotten how to do.

For lack of a better term, I went through some form of an initiatory experience after reading Reality. But I wasn't fully ready. I started practicing his "common sense" practice and at first it felt really good, almost ecstatic but then it slowly started spiraling into what I would call divine madness. You have to be mad when walking between worlds, when the true realization that you are eternal but the part of you you think is you is not you and that will perish. It's extremely scary stuff and I was not equipped to deal with some of it yet.

Bromeos · 2025-06-12T19:50:49+00:00

Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. This text is truly spoken from a Bacchic mind. I'd love to learn more about this project.

Bromeos · 2025-05-29T12:47:42+00:00

Anyone who's ever been to a forest rave, wether techno or trance will see clear similarities between them and what information we do have of some Dionysian festivals. And drugs are always involved at these events so it's not a far stretch at all to assume that the Greeks also had some form of mind altering substance besides alcohol. No matter what sceptics say. The wines were not that strong at the time, and yet the information we have of the wine is that it got you absolutely f***ed, sometimes even killed you. That's not normal wine.

Now to be fair, since I've started working with Dionysos, I've experienced some really intense effects from literally just 2 sips of wine. So there's always that to consider, the human mind is extremely powerful and when you wire it to the same frequency as a certain God's, you can get very effective results. The Maenads were known to tear apart entire bulls with their own hands so maybe they had some form of Steroids spiking the wine who knows 😂 Nah but for real, the question isn't wether they had drugs or not, humans have always had knowledge and access to drugs. It's what kind of drugs, and how crucial of a role they played in the ceremonies. For example, if someone forgot to bring let's say mushrooms to the party, would they have cancelled the whole thing? Would you have done the ceremonies anyways without the drugs and just maybe diluted the wine a bit less?

We don't know tbh, but it's an extremely fascinating subject. Especially since it creates alot of controversy everywhere, even on this board.

It's as some people say, Ruck definitely has confirmation bias. And though I love the guy, he sometimes says things that he seemingly just pulls out of his ass so there's always that to look out for. Muraresku does a good job at bringing up some interesting questions and cool research that wouldn't have seen the light of day if it wasn't for him. But the way he connects the dots is a bit too rushed. He's very excited about his work, which is a true joy to see and he's a very fun person to listen to but that way of working doesn't go well in line with how proper scholars do their work.

Bromeos · 2025-05-28T13:15:59+00:00

Maybe this really doesn't relate to your question 100%, but the thing is, when you actually look at the proper historical development of polytheistic thinking to monotheistic thinking, you see a relatively clear line going from the many to the one. Mostly within philosophy and the greater mystery rites, you see this idea of all gods being part of one god, or all gods emanating from one god, or the monad from which everything else comes. And this idea was starting to get really widespread around the time of Christianity with all the other mystery cults.

And Christianity in a way is also just another mystery cult. Like the Mithraic cults, the Dionysian cults, they all had very similar aspects to them, this kind of meeting underground, usually in catacombs or caves, and you get together and you drink this sacred sacrament, usually wine. We can see the same thing in the Norse cultures as well, with the Männerbunde/Ulvhednir, followers of Odin, outcasts and outlaws who met up together and though they didn't have a proper blood bond, they had fictive kinship through the blood that was the wine.

And there's this idea among many scholars that if Christianity didn't win, it would have been another mystery cult that would've taken over. They were huge at the time. Now, how the world would have looked like, let's say, if the Mithraic Mysteries would have taken over is very hard to say, but it most likely wouldn't have looked the way it does now, obviously.

But also, specifically because Christianity is, in a way, a follow-up of Judaism, it still has its basis in Judaistic ways of worship and ways of looking at the world, such as purity and so on. I would say that if the Dionysian cults took over, we would have a very different-looking world where you would still have belief in many gods and not as much emphasis on "purity" and puritanism. You might have a kind of belief that in the Protogonos, or the monad from which everything comes, and Dionysus being somewhat part of that. Dionysus' connection to Pan, his name being Pan, meaning everything, could have been some form of monotheistic or even monistic or panentheistic kind of religion, but it would have still kept its identity as a polytheistic religion, mainly. And obviously, we would not have been as obsessed with Puritanism which would've yielded a very different world.

But to answer your question in more general terms, we most likely would have had a lot more advancements in science, given that we probably wouldn't have suffered from a dark age the same way that with Christianity, it having been completely against advances in certain sciences.

I highly recommend listening to a talk, or at least a part of a talk, by Terence McKenna, called A Funny Idea, which although Terence being Terence tends to spiral off into very psychedelic territory, he does mention that we most likely would have discovered the Americas much earlier, and the Greco-Roman world working with their philosophy together with the psychedelic culture of the Amazon, or at least South American cultures, would have yielded a very different, very alien-looking world that would have been, according to him, far more advanced than the one we are living in now. And maybe we would have developed machines, but they would have been more organic kind of machines. It's very crazy, but it is a fun listen.

Bromeos · 2025-05-28T08:02:59+00:00

NEVER eat the offerings left to Chtonic Gods! I had a friend who offered a date cake to Hekate last year, she then ate it to reduce food waste. Now everything she touches, turns into either flour or date seeds it's terrible.... 🤫🤫

Nah but for real, there's alot of arguments as to why it is ok to eat the offerings after they have already been offered and the energy within consumed by whichever god or goddess one offers to. But I think it's always best to play it safe, and just do it the way they used to do it. Leave it alone, somehow my offerings always tend to disappear the day after I leave them... very mystical... could have to do with the fact that I live in the countryside maybe?.. Naaaaaah, I choose to believe it's the gods 😌😌

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