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Comment by hnthrowaway0315 | Hacker News Reader

I used to be into Occult, but never mustered the courage to learn Latin, Greek or Hebrew. I think French is also an important language. Of course there are English writers such as the beast.

Just curious if anyone is into this kind of stuffs. I got into this in late teen, believing that Lovecraftian is a really thing. It quickly turned out to be made up by the great writer, but nevertheless Occult drew me in. I was never deep into it due to lack of time and my belief in science (or we can say modern science especially Physics and Mathematics are the modern Occult).

Maybe I'll dig deeper and learn a few foreign languages after 50.

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There are actually some fairly high quality translations of things nowadays. Much better than even 20 years ago. If you are still inclined to the occult, now is a better time than pretty much ever.

Science doesn't negate an interest in the arcane, esoteric, or occult. You can still find this stuff fascinating, and in fact there are practitioners who are actively involved in scientific circles simultaneously. It is not always mutually exclusive.

I’d say it goes beyond not being mutually exclusive. They complement each other, sometimes in surprising ways. Sacred geometry, concepts of frequency and vibrational rates, extracting signal from noise, if you are well versed in math and science you’ll find a lot of synchronicities. Fourier analysis dovetails with the concept of unity.

Pythagoras was what we might call an occultist. Newton was an alchemist (which isn’t about lead to gold, it’s about the transmutation of the Self), Jack Parsons was a Thelemite. Ramanujan credited his genius to visions.

Science and math can’t (yet) answer the big questions. There are things it doesn’t even try and touch. In my experience, curious minds are often interested in trying to attain a broader understanding of the universe and our place in it.

"Newton was an alchemist (which isn’t about lead to gold, it’s about the transmutation of the Self)"

Well, maybe not so much. That's kind of a 19th-20th century interpretation. We didn't want to believe that all these smart people really were into stupidity like turning lead into gold. Surely it must be much deeper than that! It must have been metaphors! But maybe not. Maybe they literally were into what they said they were into. It's not unlike how people want to claim that various religious stories weren't "really" about what they claim to be.

Respectfully, Zosimus is one of the earliest Hellenistic writers on alchemy and he speaks of chemistry as a symbol:

“There are two sciences and two wisdoms, that of the Egyptians and that of the Hebrews, which latter is confirmed by divine justice. The science and wisdom of the most excellent dominate the one and the other. Both originate in olden times. Their origin is without a king, autonomous and immaterial; it is not concerned with material and corruptible bodies, it operates, without submitting to strange influences, supported by prayer and divine grace.

The symbol of chemistry is drawn from the creation by its adepts, who cleanse and save the divine soul bound in the elements, and who free the divine spirit from its mixture with the flesh.“

On the other hand we really can understand the chemistry that alchemists were fiddling with -- it wasn't metaphorical -- they really were messing around with chemicals and not souls. We still call some things by the names alchemists called them like "aqua regia" (literally "royal water") which is a nixture of nitric and hydrochloric acid that can dissolve gold and platinum. And which they hoped could therefore make more of it.

That to me is one of the most interesting aspects. Somehow, these people who were deeply spiritual, also were adepts of science, and while we can’t say any of them got it exactly right, the paths intersected enough that their contributions were in some ways foundational.

Psychology and psychiatry are two other fields that traveled the path of spirituality and occultism before becoming what we now term modern.

It speaks to the resonance of being- as above, so below.

> We didn't want to believe that all these smart people really were into stupidity like turning lead into gold.

Alchemy was not stupid in the 17th century. You have the benefit of three centuries of subsequent scientific advances, to which geniuses like Isaac Newton, and those other smart people, contributed significantly.

Besides alchemy, Newton was deeply immersed in various occult studies. He was also a heretic, being a Unitarian, keeping his religious beliefs secret. Scientific research occupied only a part of his time. The seventeenth century was a time of religious and political turmoil, millenarianism and apocalyptic prophecy abounded. Newton was a man of his time.

Thanks! I do know that one rocket scientist, Jack Parsons, was an occult researcher. I wonder what he found...

If you want the Lovecraftian mythos to be a thing, then the field of chaos magic (popularised largely by Peter J Carroll in Liber Null and Psychonaut) is an interesting one.

For traditional ritual/ceremonial magic The Heptameron is possibly the easiest of the old grimoires to read, and whilst he has his detractors Joseph Lisiewski's Ceremonial Magic & The Power of Evocation is pretty readable as a modern take.

(None of this is to comment on the truth or practicality of the belief systems and practices, it's just a pointer to possibly interesting early stage sources.)

Thanks, never heard about these! For modern ones I only know Eliphas Levi, Madam Blavatsky, Crowley and the rocket scientist.

Lovecrafts lore might not be the story, but i woulsnt be shocked if it was accurate allegory.

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