Principles of Hermetism

i love this post and find it very fasinating.

the sixth principle is that of cause and effect;
this tells us that nothing is above the laws of reality, nothing merely happens. Everything is either a cause or an effect, or as i would propose, everything is in flux between causing and being affected by a cause. this is an important principle in understanding this one can mentally transmute themselves for being affected to causing effectual results in reality. Another benefit of mastering this principle is, again, mental and spiritual neutrality, where one vibrates the conscious above causal situations therefore eliminating the effect.

the last principle is that of gender;
hermetic philosophy states that all things that come into beings, physical mental or spiritual have manifest in them gender. all things have feminine and masculine principles. these are not the gross material and base forms of gender, but the greater manifest of gender role in matter and spirit. positive and negative, passive and aggressive.

this is a great axiom worthy of mention here;

"The possession of Knowledge, unless accompanied by a manifestation and expression in Action, is like the hoarding of precious metals — a vain and foolish thing. Knowledge, like Wealth, is intended for Use. The Law of Use is Universal, and he who violates it suffers by reason of his conflict with natural forces."-- the three initiates

"to obtain knowledge and do nothing with it is to be worse than the ignorant fool; for at least he does not have the responsibility of understanding. what a sin unto your fellow mankind to comprehend that which is great and to act on that which is petty."--Arca :)

This is a wonderful post and I really appreciate you sharing your personal experiences with us.
I dont really know that much about hermetic arts so I am glad you wrote this, thankyou.

This is a letter i wrote to a friend with whom i am having a dialogue related to this subject matter, so i thought i would post it.

I have yet to read the book "thought forms" so I am not familiar with the concept although I have seen it talked about and may have a basic idea already about what they are but just don't know it yet! It may actually relate to string theory a bit, but I'm not sure. (string theory did have a lot of holes in it, so many so that there were 5 separate unreconciled theories, and then M-theory seemed to unite them.)
"It [string theory] showed how all the particles, and all of the forms of energy in the universe, could be constructed by hypothetical one-dimensional "strings," infinitely small building-blocks that have only the dimension of length, but not height or width."-from Wikipedia
These "strings" vibrate in multiple dimensions, and depending on how they vibrate, they might be seen in 3-dimensional space as matter, light, or gravity. It is the vibration of the string which determines whether it appears to be matter or energy, and every form of matter or energy is the result of the vibration of strings. This seems to direct me to believe that the energy that is manipulated in magic is a viable and real vibration.
This is(in my mind) also directly related to the principles in hermetical science of vibration, rhythm, and polarity; also seems to support mental alchemy, or mental transmutation through controlling the vibration of the minds thoughts. This also links to your observation about the planes of existence and the degree of "coarseness" as related to level of consciousness. As you said, the energies of the three dimensional reality traveling through the fourth dimension of time are perceived by our physical, three dimension senses and translated into chemical and electric impulses which translate into thought. This thought is then able to become conscious awareness of thought; this self awareness becomes an entity in and of itself [qualia] , unable to be directly represented by chemicals and three dimensional realities without being translated back through the thought process. This is where I believe the ability of the conscious mind [soul, self, qualia] to transcend physical limitations of dimension comes into play.

the 1-3 dimensions you are aware of as you stated, they are x,y,and z representation of 3d space, the 4th dimension being time.(actual time is divided into "packets" of time that the fastest atomic level action can transpire, which i believe is 10-43 parts of a second, called "plank time".) 5th dimension is probability space, where everything that could happen on the 4th dimensional time line exists in one timeless instant. So this does relate to your thoughts on how the higher dimensions relate to the astral plane, where a "being" of a higher plane could see the truer and richer nature of the reality of the beings that exist on lower(more coarse) planes. The 6th dimension is a plane where not only all things that could happen next exist but also all things that could have happened before. the 7-9th dimensions are ones where the laws of physics could be bent, the 10th is where all these things from the lower dimensions exist simultaneously. M-theory brings all the string theories into an 11th dimension.It did this by asserting that strings are really 1-dimensional slices of a 2-dimensional membrane vibrating in 11-dimensional space. So reality is the cross sections of various vibrations crashing into each other, which also validates the hermetic principle of cause and effect.
This bring us to the "All" which is inferred here in a quote by a physicist named Laplace who suggested that a sufficiently powerful intellect could, if it knew the position and velocity of every particle at a given time, along with the laws of nature, calculate the position of any particle at any other time:

An intellect which at a certain moment would know all forces that set nature in motion, and all positions of all items of which nature is composed, if this intellect were also vast enough to submit these data to analysis, it would embrace in a single formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the tiniest atom; for such an intellect nothing would be uncertain and the future just like the past would be present before its eyes.
— Essai philosophique sur les probabilités, Introduction. 1814
i know this is all very abstract but it gives validity and fluidity to the creative nature of magic. It also does not contradict the spiritual theorems produced through study of the hermetic arts and the Kaballah, but in fact coincides with them, bringing science and the soul together as one unit.

i hope i haven't rambled your ear off. or your eyes! haha

Arca

I loved it

I must say thanx to Arc and Angela, Im starting to read Intiation into hermetics by Franz Barton. (I find the way he writes is very understandable and easy to read).

http://www.spellsofmagic.com/read_posts.html?post=257690 is the next installment of this subject matter.