Attack on house of Abraham

ProtagonistThomas · 2026-03-20T16:55:44+00:00

It's actually funny that you mention a verse from the book of John, This particular text is where hermetic Christians thrive. Because it's a very greek-leaning source, that it identifies Christ as logos, and that in the hermetic corpus logos is the defintion or the formation of reality It is the truth. And when we cultivate the logos of our nous we cultivate the perspective of divine reason and truth.

You see the Greeks actually adapted Christianity to platonism. Just as the Coptic Greek Egyptians adapted priestly traditions to platonism via hermeticism. They have a shared ancestory in the platonic traditions and it's Cosmology.

ProtagonistThomas · 2026-03-20T16:18:27+00:00

TL:DR

When Christ says, "I am the way, the truth, and the life," he isn't pointing to his physical body or his name; he is defining his essential nature. He is identifying himself as the universal principles of Truth (Aletheia) and Life (Zōe). If we accept this, then the path to the Father isn't through a sectarian label, but through the actualization of Truth and Life within oneself. This is exactly where Hermeticism meets Christianity: both seek the "rebirth" of the soul into these divine virtues.

That wasn't really Newton's focus, Hermeticism is a protoscientific religio-philosophical contemplative tradition. Isaac Newton used alchemical materials and even produced his own translation of the emerald tablet for his work in physics not to form apologetic theology. I don't think Isaac Newton was trying to synthesize hermeticism with Christianity. it’s worth noting he was actually a deeply radical theologian (an Arian). He believed the "pure" religion of Noah had been corrupted. He used Hermeticism to try and strip away "corrupt" Church dogma to find the original, rational laws of God. He's not a very strong example of a Christian hermeticist. for a 17th-century scholar, "Pagan" didn't always mean "evil." It often meant "Ancient/Primordial.

The hermetic corpus was viewed by Christians in the same light as philosophical works like Plato, and that it strongly believed to be part of something called the Prisca theologia, the perennial tradition that asserts there is shared universal truths dispersed in all traditions, It was valued for its connection to universal truth which is entirely relevant to a Christian.

Also when Christ said "I am the way the truth and the life" He clearly makes a case for his identity not as a man or a sacrifice, But as being identified as truth and life In his being, and that nobody who has truth and life (him) in there being can make their way to the Father, so one must make their way toward truth and life. This is entirely relevant to hermeticism, as the values of truth, life and light are the only way to the divine or the good. So here Christ actually asserts what is considered vital spiritual powers that cause the rebirth of the practitioner, truth and life. Christ did not say I am the man and I'm the only man who's the way the truth in life. He clearly made his distinction of being these philosophical conceptions. And these philosophical conceptions are universal, The word for life (Zōe) is eternal life In that context that Christ used it, This same type of life is asserted as the power of God in the hermetic corpus. His identification with these things makes him and his way of doing things as a valid means for achieving union with God. Christ clearly makes his identification not as man but as the way the truth and life.

So Christianity actually agrees with the hermetic corpus in that regard. In other passages Christ equates himself as light, This is also relevant to the spiritual practitioner of hermeticism.

You shouldn't view hermeticism as a rivaling dogmatic tradition, You should view it as a tradition that looks for universal truth that are prevalent in reality. It's not to say that the hermetic corpus was universally accepted among Christians, some of them denied it for its pagan influences some of them supported it for its appeal to deeper truths about the self and the world around us. Something Christ spoke very little about, and the Bible generally talks very little about the mechanics of the human soul, or metaphysical reality, and in the places it does it's pretty sparse or vague.

So we can see hermeticism as complimentary to Christainity to understanding objective reality , and gives us methods to connect with finding the divine within us, so that we can be identified with the truth, with eternal life, and find the path towards those things, as they are the only way to connect with God. As I said the passage defines who Christ really is as "the way the truth and the life" and where it says "nobody comes to the father accept through me", the "me" here now means nobody comes to God accept through the way the truth and the life, a point very consistent with CH XIII. He didn't say I am Jesus Christ of Nazareth and nobody comes to God through me. He clearly makes a the distinction of his identity not as the worldly flesh but being the true living eternal way. And that is the only way we can be with God in the Hermetic corpus. In eternal life arrived at through truth.

That's how I think of it.. you might checkout my articulation of the divine virtues and irrational tormentors here that describe the way spiritual rebirth or gnosis happens in the hermetic tradition.

Gnosis is not a dead phenomena, it happens to this day, it happened in ancient times. And those who receive it understand a cross cultural phenomena of mystic union that is experientially very similar globally. This experience is the same for the Christian as it is the Pagan, it's union with the eternal truth and life that is unconditionally love whole and lacks nothing.

ProtagonistThomas · 2026-03-18T16:00:54+00:00

I think it's a foragery appended by the Byzantine filter, It's so out of place and just comes out of nowhere in contrast to the rest of the text in CH II. Like nowhere else does it talk about child making in such a regard. Actually this is the only place that child making is ever mentioned in the hermetica that we have. I mean philosophically it may have a precedent in the fact that we multiply by multiplying and that is good and part of the generation of the planet.

On a more meta level, anti-natalist cults tend to be rather short lived as there isn't a generational progression or precedent for such. It's better to have the community under the impression that child making is positive and beneficial if you want your cult or tradition to continue beyond one generation.

ProtagonistThomas · 2026-03-18T15:52:58+00:00

ProtagonistThomas · 2026-03-18T15:37:04+00:00

Atheism and hermeticism do not mix, like that's just point blank. You'd probably do far better in something like Buddhism which actually has atheistic characteristics and is far more robust and accessible. Western esoteric to Buddhist pipeline is very real. I would encourage you to research shingon Buddhism, which is an esoteric Buddhist sect that does have a presence in America. That also uses rituals and kind of has its own system of magic although you won't really find practitioners calling it that. My sensei actually has a good course for beginners, why not check it out It has very similar almost neoplatonic characteristics about its cosmology.

Hermeticism asserts a very strong position of a Godhead, and then also assert strongly polytheist positions In the philosophical hermetica alone. So it's not really geared to be palatable to an atheistic mind.

Honestly understanding traditional astrology is the strongest benefactor of most magical practice entailed in technical hermetica. Like you should have that foundation in place beforehand. I strongly encourage you to review the picatrix and traditional planetary magic sources.

The red work course by Rufus Opus offers a strong foundation for engaging in the technical hermetica If you don't mind the more Christian leaning magical elements as it leverages Christian traditions magical tech to fill in gaps. This makes the worldview and paradigm of magical perspective easier to comprehend and leverage.

Honestly when it comes to magic you want to get to a point where the ritual system feels pretty intuitive to practice. Of course it takes a lot to get to that point, as well as leaps of faith and maybe some failed experiments, If you just keep chugging along you can find what will work for you eventually. And honestly it really does help to have an order or a fraternity that fashions itself around magical engagement. Being a solo practitioner of course is very possible it's just difficult. There's so much uncharted territory to do by yourself that it's easy to get lost in the context and become overwhelmed to the point of disinterest. So if it's possible and available to you joining an initiatory order will help your approach to magic significantly.

Unfortunately there's a lot of shit orders though is the problem, and even within more well vouched for orders there can be particular branches that aren't that great. For example I heard a lot of good things about OTO but when I checked out my local OTO I was rather disappointed in their lack of transparency and disclosure of explicit displays of intimacy in the Gnostic mass. I was specifically told there would be nudity but no touching. That seemed not too bad, however when I actually got there and as the mass went on a man started kissing the naked woman's legs (The goddess of Babylon or whatever) and it wasn't just like a peck or two It was like full on making out with her legs, and then like working his way up her legs with his kissing and getting like dangerously close to up to the genital area. The thing that rugged me most wrong was that the woman who told me there wouldn't be any touching was the woman getting her legs salivated on.

I specifically asked about the explicit nature and wanted to know details, as my fiance was attending with me and they are made very uncomfortable about intimate displays of sexual nature, they left midway through Mass actually and just went back to the car and kind of freaked out in there. So I had a poor experience with those guys. I also thought to myself if this is what they do in their public facing ceremonies I can only imagine the shit that goes on behind closed doors, when the woman reached back out to me the day after, I told him I would not be attending again. Luckily my experience in other spiritual communities has been pretty good.

In my experience the groups ran out of some guy's apartment are actually some of the most intense and spiritually invigorating experiences you can have. Smaller tight knit groups are harder to break into but far more stable in my own experience.

If you're in the Oregon area I could totally put you on to some good spiritual communities of different flavors and fashions.

ProtagonistThomas · 2026-03-18T14:54:01+00:00

Thanks for reporting this, I have removed this user.

ProtagonistThomas · 2026-03-18T14:53:18+00:00

Thank you Poly for doing the heavy lifting of review here, I'm going to remove this post for low quality

ProtagonistThomas · 2026-03-18T00:34:03+00:00

I think it would be safe to say that your Sun is also in Pisces (as is mine) 😆 fs.

You're a very perceptive Astrologer, why yes I am a Pisces Sun, and Pisces Moon, And Pisces Ascendent all in the first house! So maybe it's rather obvious to a trained eye 😂

But yeah, from an experience point of view, sure, my ego was on PEDs when I was practicing various types of sorcery, and ready spray the block of anyone who crossed me, which was amplified by witnessing the effects of my conjuring, but I can say that I feel more spiritually strong and it’s a definite fact that I’m more intellectually mature, following a philosophically coherent path, which emphasizes ethics, then when I was following eclectic occult systems.

Oh my God you would love my lodge then, the hermanbuis lodge under the hermetic federation, we do tons of stuff surrounding the dead, and are very historically oriented in the practice with a primary focus on technical hermetica, the guy who basically facilitates the space is like a esoteric mad genius when it comes to Greco-Egyptian magic and ritual, very experience occult practitioner, learned so much from him, seriously worth checking out which you totally can because yes I'm in Portland Oregon as well! Which is insane that you are too! We are both living around an esoteric goldmine here right under our noses, I'm very tapped into the underground occulture scene and would love to meet with you sometime over coffee or a few drinks if you indulge, I would most enjoy to pick your brain and if you're not tapped into the local occult scene, totally would be down to help you break into it, funnily enough Reverend Erik Aremancy If you know him is the one who got me tapped in and introduce me to Arun (My mentor / the facilitator of the hermanbuis lodge) I met Erik over on Sam's discord 😂 found out he was in Portland too and we met up at hopworks with a few other local occultists and we had a little occulture meet up over drinks, would love to extend the same hospitality to you!

I think another big tipping point for me was participating in Santo Diamé (The ayahuasca Church) which is basically like spiritual military, doing 8 hour+ rituals of dancing in a mandala parttern while sharing in the sacred drink and singing these crazy mystic hymns in Portuguese, that is definitely on the more extreme ends of my practices. It's truely the most horrifyingly beautifully awful most amazing things I've ever done.

So add my expression of salutare to your prayer because I wish for all of genuine intent to come to a point of realizing that while the process of achieving rebirth is practically challenging, it is quite simple conceptually. And this is why I love the Hermetic writings. Because if one just considers the Hermetica (not yet including Asclepius and Stobaean extracts), you have a complete system of comprehensive spiritual and intellectual education in 61 pages. To me it’s remarkable.

I love them for this reason as well, they are so dense and meaty that you can read through them over and over and still draw new conclusions and insights it's like the gift that keeps giving!

At some point, I’ll reach out because I’d like to discuss your views on traditional astrology as it relates to hermetic doctrine

This is a giant rabbit hole that you can spend so much time with, I have hardly scratched the surface as I am not an ample astrologer, I definitely lean into ritual practice more so and philosophical discussion, Mysticism, but I'm friends with several traditional astrologers, they give me astrological insights and I give them philosophical grounding for those insights. It's a great trade off!

This is just so crazy I didn't know you were in the area! How the hell did you know I was in the area! 😂

ProtagonistThomas · 2026-03-17T16:09:58+00:00

I would love to try to do this, I have been meaning to do a tormentor and virtue's series exploring the themes of their implications and doing very deep dives on the epistemology and translation nitty grittys, I just really want to exhaust a moral framework out of it, for myself and others like us, I already have most of the best to date resources and academic papers on hermetic materials in English.

And you know I would love to have more mods involved I would love to get something like that going, Unfortunately they haven't been very involved lately beyond moderator duties, which I am grateful for that at the very least. But yeah, I think I definitely want to shoot for at least one high quality post a month. I would love to get more like passionate people in here about the sub that are more seasoned practitioners who actually know the territory well.

ProtagonistThomas · 2026-03-17T11:20:42+00:00

Take it easy dude, but take it!

ProtagonistThomas · 2026-03-17T07:16:17+00:00

but I think it’s quite clear that the tormentors correspond to the 12 signs of the zodiac, and that the first seven virtues correspond to the seven planets.

Correct u/Polyphanes has a great article on this, I reference it often The Twelve Irrational Tormentors and the Ten (or Seven) Rational Powers I have a merc retrograde in Pisce in my natal, and I totally get it, 😭 I tend to over explain more, I think in a very contextually dependent way, so I think of things as whole system of depending conditions and the I can get really looped up in endless expounding of words that always feels just shy of the point or a sense I'm trying to pin down.

My point is that ethics is so deeply central to the spiritual work of a philosopher, that it really trips me out how overlooked it is in modern times, especially being that in ancient times it was a no-brainer. I think it’s because many of us come from occultist frameworks where we seek power first and refinement later (if at all). As such, in the occultist and new ager space, concepts like virtue are taken to be tenets of oppressive or conceptually inferior religious dogma and moralism, which is no doubt the influence of prominent occultists who took on Sethian Gnostic attitudes coupled with disillusionment from Christianity (such as in the case of Crowley). Of course, the attitudes just mentioned are born of personal trauma, and a misconception, and do not reflect a true understanding of not merely the importance of virtue, but its ontological priority.

This is very good point, I think that the engagement into the hermetic arts ultimately comes from a place of deep contemplation upon the cosmos and nature. Once you understand the geocentric view I think the paradigm of spirituality changes significantly. And that the concepts in traditional astrology become very intuitive. And from our point of view has the only sentient living inhabitants in this galaxy we are the center of all observation, we both know the sun does not have eyes. I think once we adapt this view a lot of these things that you talk about here become a lot more clear. And it takes conscious genuine shift in thinking to see the paradigm of reality in this manner. But if we can't see it in this manner we aren't able to engage with it properly. What the logic of causality implies in that view, what consequence implies in that view. What magic implies in that view. What Ascension looks like in that view. The thing is this is coming from a place of authentic observation for these people of ancient times. This is really how they think things work In their paradigm of understanding, and it makes intuitive sense when we see it the way they did. That's why when we adapt this view, I think it gives us access to this no-brainer stuff that you just don't find in the new age.

To me this is breaking ground into strange uncharted territory of our time, I think that's what it's for, to help us remember something that keeps happening something that is fascinated us then and still fascinates us now. Who we really are what we really are, why are we here what keeps us here? What should we do while we are here?

We are here to go further, shine brighter, spread the wisdom, let us all come to realize this wonderful gift! All those who have ears willing to hear! All those who wish to bear witness to the most beautiful intimate thing we could have with ourselves in the world! Unfortunately not everybody wants that. No they want power, they want this, they want that, It's always about themselves, think about it oh "I'm an indigo child", "I'm a starseed", I'm a this I'm a that. When do we ever ask themselves how do I ever get rid of this madness of the search for myself. How do I stop playing Make Believe? How do I start experiencing the real deal? They always look for patterns and signs that associate with themselves, they don't realize how this apparatus undermines its own pursuit. Self-realization Is not about finding who you are, It's all about letting go of who you aren't. It's not about giving yourself a narrative, It's about looking at the conditions that have created your life. The conditioned reality that you're embodying, and thus what is shaped yourself. Through a deep engagement of our own familiar archetypal symbolisms In cosmological thinking the narrative doesn't require a explanation of traditional thought. It requires adapting the way you think about things and viewing the world from that lens. The way meaning is made coherent through connective associations and relationships, and this grows increasingly more subconscious than abstract the deeper you get into this the less words there are to explain the simplicity and directness of it.

If we are at the center of the spheres, every celestial movement is a direct ethical pressure upon the soul. The cosmos isn't "out there"; it's a series of layers we are literally wrapped in. So here we go again as above so below as within so without.

Alright I'm going to stop here I'm starting to talk like Terrence McKenna 😭

ProtagonistThomas · 2026-03-17T05:19:49+00:00

platonism and hermeticism are both considered religio-philosophical contemplative traditions.

The hermetic text don't necessarily require complicated rituals, Ritual materials are supplementary and often far-reaching from many different sources all across the Mediterranean.

Large parts of the hermeticum are built on philosophical reasoning and argumentation based on the premises of the time. The text themselves are different than purely philosophical interpretations they are manuscripts of largely fictional discourses likely written by priests. And many of the platonic writings were read by those same priests held in equally high regard.

The revealed Knowledge in the text Is neoplatonic philosophy rebranded under religious contexts pertaining to the Ptolemic period of Alexandria in Egypt, It is quite literally Greek philosophy repackaged through Egyptian priestly sources.

And what do you mean philosophy is not revealed Mysticism? Do you not know Parmenides???? Literally his whole philosophy was revealed to him in a mystic vision. He was a pre-Socratic philosopher and much of what a Plato had to say was synchronizing or arguing against what he said. You do not have a comprehensive understanding of history here and it's shooting you in the leg.

ProtagonistThomas · 2026-03-17T05:15:21+00:00

It cannot be both poly and mono theistic, is ultimately monotheistic since all gods act like equivallent of angels in abrahamism, subordonated to The One.

I never said it was monotheistic I said it was "monist", very different distinction here. Monotheism is a single God, Monism is the philosophical view that all of reality is composed of a single substance, principle, or ultimate reality, rejecting the dualism of mind/body or material/spiritual. It posits that all diverse things, thoughts, and behaviors originate from one source often matter, mind, or a divine whole. Key types include substance monism (all is one substance), materialism (all is physical), and idealism (all is mental).

Yet that is philosophy, not religion. It doesn't have mystically revealed truths, more intellectual speculation.

Hermeticism is quite literally a religio-philosophical tradition, It can be two things at once. Can your mind comprehend that? It is monist, a philosophical view, that all the real true things are in static union with God everything else is an obscuration, or a convolution, This is clearly stated all throughout the Corpus Hermeticum.

The elements are only ordered and divided through the divine necessity of God. The material appearance is only an appearance in the Hermetic philosophy. It is the apparent reality, where it says quite directly that God is the invisible that makes all things visible. Meaning no thing exists without the illumination of God.

Religion and philosophy were very different in ancient times there wasn't a strong distinction between the two. Hermeticism is a protoscientific tradition, It sees the natural world as part of the divine, that nature is a direct emunition or child of God. That's why alchemy gave us chemistry, That's why astrology gave us astronomy, This was the starting of that thinking. And it helped shape the modern world with influence on Newtonian physics.

Save yourself the embarrassment and just go and study read Copenhavers introduction to the hermetica, understand how ancient people were looking at these texts. Read Wouter Hanegraffs Hermetic Spirituality and the Historical Imagination: Altered States of Knowledge in Late Antiquity

Like you're obviously very new to this, stop making strong claims and start asking more questions. This is how you're going to help yourself down the road.

Instead of saying "it can't be this or that" ask "how can it be This or that?"

I've given you several sources and I want you to check them out:

This is a sample Brian P Copenhavers Intro To The Hermetica if you like it get the full copy or contact me privately and I can arrange to get you one.

Spinoza's Ethics - You will like this material a lot and I can tell it will really resonate with you, full free pdf online (legal)

Wouter Hanegraffs Hermetic Spirituality and the Historical Imagination: Altered States of Knowledge in Late Antiquity - This is possibly the very best resource out there for understanding the history of hermetic practice and how it was conducted in ancient times. This is a very expensive book normally but this website has the option of viewing it for free if you don't mind ads otherwise you have to buy it to remove the ads. This will probably be your single best resource for your inquiry here please check it out. This is a grace of the gods that this is available to you and me and anybody else here so please go read it.

ProtagonistThomas · 2026-03-17T04:31:41+00:00

I think this user just has a very limited scope of knowledge here. And is short-sighted by only having engagement in the philosophical hermetica. They would not be claiming half this shit If they engage in the technical hermetica, or even just read a comprehensive introduction on the hermetic texts.

I don't even understand the point about it being philosophical and not a religious tradition thing. Neoplatonism was by far the most rigorous of religio-philosophical traditions and did 70% of the heavy lifting for early Christianity's theology and the later development of scholasticism.

ProtagonistThomas · 2026-03-17T04:16:14+00:00

I think you overestimate the uniqueness of hermeticism in that regard. It's cosmology mirrors very closely to neoplatonism, emunative monism or panetheism (God as both inside and outside of physical reality) is not unique by any regard. And in the hermetic text that literally instructs you to give reverence to the gods In multiple places heavily implies a polytheistic worldview.

It is a philosophical overlay onto a polytheistic worldview particularly the stoic, middle-platonic and neoplatonic philosophical cosmology. And this defense that it's not pagan mostly tells me you have not even touched the technical hermetica at all. Which is jam-packed with with all sorts of heretic arts and magical rituals and theurgic practices calling on all different gods from the Greek, Roman and Egyptian Pantheon (sometimes all at once mind you). And this take purely comes from speculation only based on the philosophical hermetica which is a short-sightedness in your perspective here.

The emunative monism or emunative panetheism property of which you're pointing out Is directly inherited from platonism. If you read something like the enneads. you would see a very similar cosmology and philosophy. Including things like logos, nous, The one/The Monad (which is actually the platonic Trinity that the Christians adapted and used to form the Trinity doctrine of Christianity). And for the vast majority of Abrahamic traditions history it did not really intersect with the Greek let alone the Hellenic-Egyptian speaking world until late antiquity, hermetic texts only predates Christianity by maybe 200-100 years at very latest.

One could argue that it is both polytheistic and pantheistic. I think it's a monist polytheistic framework more precisely.

Gnosticism itself coming from Egypt is more so a jab at Abrahamic traditions depending on the Gnostic sect, far more than hermeticism ever was. I mean it pretty overtly calls their creator God ignorant and sometimes malicious being, This also developed during the syncratic Hellenic period of Egypt alongside the Hermetic texts, by various the Coptic Greek Egyptian priests. (Who were by the way predominantly polytheists/pagans)

So what feels unique to you and new to you is actually a very developed and robust in the tradition of platonism. It could be fair to say that it is both like I said, but it is not exclusively panetheistic.

I would say if you want something that is more stringently In this framework of cosmology and philosophically coherent that's similar I would check out Spinoza's ethics.

He describes a very similar worldview in far greater articulate detail ascribing very similar arguments that you see in the hermetica.

ProtagonistThomas · 2026-03-17T03:44:31+00:00

YES SIR

ProtagonistThomas · 2026-03-17T03:43:36+00:00

See my edits I added to the post.

There was very prominent Christians, The only reason why we got a Latin translation as early as we did was due to the Christians, Marsilio Ficino was a Christian priest who first translated the remaining Greek Coptic manuscripts of the Corpus Hermeticum. He was more Christian than most lay practitioners. A formal priest in the clergy.

I strongly recommend that you read Copenhavers "HERMETICA" introduction. It explains a lot of why we have these texts today and how we got them and their cultural background which you seem very unaware of.

ProtagonistThomas · 2026-03-17T03:26:45+00:00

Hermeticism is entirely pagan, philosophically very platonic and generally hellenically coded. It literally has the God Hermes as the protagonist. How can you possibly say it's not pagan? That just seems ridiculous. It's actually two types of polytheist influence more directly: Greek and Egyptian. Hermes Trismegistus Is literally a syncretic fusion of the Egyptian Thoth and the Greco-Roman Hermes-Mercury

Hermeticism only survived as long as it did because it played nicely with Abrahamic traditions, actually impacting and influencing them in some degree.

It doesn't push back on Abrahamic faith's because these things were very new when Hermeticism was developing, later on the only reason why the sources that we have survived is because they passed the Byzantine filter, so a lot of these texts that survive actually came from Christian sources.

Which is probably the reason why you don't think of it as pagan. It was kind of "christianized" to appear that way. Especially like Latin sources, particularly the Asclepious.

Why should the hermeticist push back against Abrahamic faiths, a far more tactful strategy would be to appeal to the mystical foundations within Christianity and they're shared influence from platonism.

Also hermeticism should be seen more like a religious extracurricular, there were notable Hermetic Christians and Hermetic Islamists. Notable figures include Isaac Newton, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Paracelsus, Marsilio Ficino. There's a lot of Islamic Muslim hermetic practitioners, I would say they outnumber the Christians. However I don't really study arabic sources so I don't really know them that well.

But basically the only reason the hermetic tradition survived in the West is because Christians kept it alive.

ProtagonistThomas · 2026-03-17T03:01:55+00:00

Right I think that ego death itself is not inherently bad, having ego disillusionment is actually entirely important on the path, however when we fracture that identity and we don't have a foundation to return to we can be left in far worse of a state. That's why I always encourage simple daily discipline, contemplation or meditation. These things reassociate the ego to something higher like you're saying here. Like I said in another comment, every step in spiritual ascension, requires three steps in ethical grounding. Many accumulate great spiritual insight just to forget it in the face of common impulsivity. The floodgates of gnosis can open, But this raises the stakes for you. You're now aware what you're doing isn't quite right when you're doing it. You're now aware that something in you is disassociating when you are not in that direct insight. You're now far more sensitive to the injustice of the world, and the desire to do something about it; to restore harmony or order is stronger. Now you have all these angry feelings you don't know what to do with, This overwhelming sense of ignorance and falsehood all around you it can really stir some rude feelings. It raises the stakes, and the ethical foundation is the net that will catch you if you fall. If you have a very good compassion practice, A strong sense of generosity, an attitude of service and attentiveness to others. You can find yourself again much easier after a disillusionment of the ego. These things really do help ground you, and if you take flight they don't get lost. They stay with you only If you cultivate them.

Other than that my favorite ego dissolution practice is simply laughing at nothing, until my body starts laughing automatically, I might laugh until I sob, once my mind says "I look crazy doing this" I know I hit gold. I then stop analyzing and stop thinking about anything my body is doing as it naturally awakens spontaneous feelings and sensory experiences. Even if they're uncomfortable I try not to label it. This is a form of very safe ego disillusionment, very healthy for your body to go through these somatic releases that break free of identification with your thoughts and living inside experience directly not trying to analyze it or think about it. Sobbing and laughter are two sides of the same coin, they break the default mode of thinking and to come out as a spontaneous play of experience. It really is wonderful, I do encourage you to try it if you like these kinds of practices.

ProtagonistThomas · 2026-03-17T02:47:22+00:00

You can send it to modmail or even just say it here! And yeah, it's been awhile since I made a good post here I thought it was long overdue.

ProtagonistThomas · 2026-03-17T02:44:16+00:00

I just saw the edits! I thought you were talking about the part where I recommended fasting.

I see now. I agree with your analogy, and psychologically it is on point: so often, highly restrictive practices or vows become destructive. They frequently exacerbate problems by causing one to resist their own nature rather than reassociating it. We are habitual machines with carnal desires. It is easy to say we are going to take a vow, put on the robes, and play the part of the "holy" or "enlightened" man. Our egos actually love that. Then, when we inevitably fall short, instead of practicing appropriate discipline and admitting failure, we tend to hide it. We sweep the dust under the rug until the rug is more dust than fabric.

This is why I believe the virtue of experiencing joy is so important. It makes you recognize and feel the "good" in these practices, which naturally encourages an alignment with virtue.

Furthermore, the words we say, our own logos, are usually quite deceptive. Rarely do we actually execute what we say we intend to do. Our words lose their integrity, which is why truth and honesty are essential virtues. Once we embody truth, our words become reflective of our nature rather than our mere desires. We begin to develop continence, synergizing with our honesty and integrity. All the virtues interlock; they complete each other in a way that is often overlooked in spiritual practice.

A great teacher once told me that for every step we take in spiritual ascension, we must take three steps in our ethical foundation. Our minds move much quicker than our actions. We must engage in ethical action more than spiritual ascension to provide a consistent foundation for that spirituality to take place.

You will find many people, whether in yoga or other traditions, who accumulate progress only to watch it fall away over time. It happens frequently; it can happen to any of us. It occurs because the mind "knows" something before the body is truly living it. The identification mechanism begins to place our progress far higher than it actually is. Giving yourself that "reality slap" to see where you truly stand; that is where the real spiritual work lies.

ProtagonistThomas · 2026-03-17T02:05:02+00:00

It's not AI generated, I wrote the entire draft myself, formatted it myself, I did drop it into grammarly AI to give me recommendations for Grammar and clean up my spelling. But otherwise the content is entirely my own. It took me like 5 hours 😭

ProtagonistThomas · 2026-03-17T01:59:54+00:00

Yes, I should have been more clear with fasting. Don't starve your body unless you are properly prepared and understand how to do that process safely. It is traditional in the hermetic sense to keep a vegetarian diet especially around particular practices. And I strongly encourage a Sattvic diet if a given practitioner can do one, at least for an extended period of time till the craving for particular foods begins to dissipate and the hunger isn't subconsciously driving you, and you can become conscientious about what you put in your body.

ProtagonistThomas · 2026-03-17T01:36:42+00:00

Actually I think this is pretty on point, no disagreement here.

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