The road to Adocentyn

“The City of Hermes: Articles and Essays on Occultism” is a recent book by John Michael Greer. The material isn´t recent, though. Greer has collected articles on Hermetic occultism he wrote during the 1990´s and republished them in book form. The reason seems to be that more people are interested in the material today than when published in various obscure occult journals (some of them edited by Greer himself) over 20 years ago. At the time, the author was an occultist in the Golden Dawn tradition. Later, he put the GD aside and concentrated on the nature spirituality of the AODA, a Neo-Druid order (which he also headed). Today, it seems Greer wants the best of both worlds, his new group DOGD combining Golden Dawn ritual magic with Druid Revivalism! I have no idea why Hermetism is suddenly back in fashion in the American occult underground, but I wouldn´t be surprised if Greer´s own blogs have something to do with it…

The book is a virtual smorgasbord where almost everyone with some kind of interest in Hermeticism should be able to find something of interest. Topics covered include: Golden Dawn rituals, the structure of secret lodges, Jesus and Osiris, Pythagoras, swordsmanship, geomancy, and the political background to the Western “mind-body” problem (a man-made problem according to the author). The strangest article by far deals with Ars Memorativa, the art of memory often associated with Giordano Bruno. I admit that it sounds very hard to believe that the stuff works, but the author says it does! Personally, though, I would feel claustrophobic walking around in a labyrinth with gazebos inhabited by weird dream-like characters. I think I´ll stick to written shopping lists! Seriously, though, Ars Memorativa is interesting – if you have the time to actually try it – and it´s obviously also a meditation technique which could come in handy in other occult pursuits.

Since I´m not particularly “occult” myself, I found the three-part historical study “Magic, Politics, and the Origins of the `Mind-Body Problem´” to be the most interesting contribution. Greer convincingly argues that the mind-body problem in Western philosophy and science is really a pseudo-problem, ancient occultists and Asian philosophies having no problem with it, for instance. The problem emerged in the Western world as the result of very concrete political and material factors during the Early Modern Period. Greer argues that three distinct worldviews clashed during this period, each one of them representing certain social classes or layers. High Church Christianity in both its Protestant and Catholic forms represented the aristocracy, materialist science the bourgeoisie, while esotericism – strangely enough – existed in both aristocratic and plebeian forms. To make a long story somewhat shorter, the dualist split between mind and matter typical of the “mind-body problem” was the result of a historical compromise between the nobility and the bourgeoisie, as exemplified by the 1688 Glorious Revolution in England. The universe worked according to mechanical natural laws understood and explained by science, but God was the creator of the cosmic order, which moreover included occult forces working at a distance (such as gravity). This willy-nilly gave rise to the “problem” of how mind and matter could interact at all, if they were dualistically distinct.

One thing I like about Greer is his heretical, iconoclastic tendency – even when he smashes all the wrong idols! In the previously mentioned essay on the mind-body problem, Greer points out that the Jacobites (who are often idealized in occult milieus) were really French agents and had very little support in Britain. (As a side point, he mentions that Swedish secret societies supported the Jacobites!) In the contribution on Pythagoras, he criticizes the tendency to explain (or explain away?) all “irrational” and “exotic” traits of Greek culture as foreign influences. Why can´t Pythagoras or the Orphics have come up with their ideas about reincarnation, dualism and asceticism all by themselves, or even based them on some earlier *Greek* thinkers? The notion that these currents within Greek thought really come from Egypt, Thrace or India is an attempt to paint ancient Greece as more rational-minded than it really was. This is a very good point, although I suspect that Greek “irrationality” might just as readily manifest as a readiness for foreign borrowing.  Apocalypticism and millenarianism are sharply criticized in one text, be they Christian, secular or indeed Hermetic. Another “heretical” article (literal heresy) interprets the Gospels as a mélange of astrological, agricultural and magical symbolism, including some that could be Indo-European. The idea that “the man killed by a spear and suspended in the air” is an Indo-European mythological motif is interesting. (Yes, Jesus = Odin.) I assumed the dying god (or goddess) was solely a Mideast thing.

Perhaps I´m a bit occult in some of my interests after all… ;-)

Many of the themes found in this volume were developed by the author at much greater length in later books. Thus, the structure and ritual of lodges is dealt with in “Inside a Magical Lodge”. Esoteric swordsmanship is the subject-matter for “The Spirit and the Sword”. The apocalyptic meme is taken apart in “Apocalypse Not”, which I think was published in 2012, appropriately enough! The author has also published books on geomancy. When all is said and done, “The City of Hermes” could therefore be seen as a kind of prequel teaser trailer to the wider Greerverse.