The Midrash & Magik, Creative Potencies, and The Grimiore Tradition

19:32the overarching that's the main meat and potatoes of of of the Hebrew cosmology, theology, just the whole world view. Uh it's it's it's the story. It's the story of of Judaism. And um — are there any magical or mystical texts that were contemporary with in terms of dating the Torah? The main issue with all of the Jewish literature, all of it, except for some of the stuff in the Middle Ages, um, you've got what is historically verifiable and an academic community that is consistently placing it in a

20:15wide swath of time, right? Because the thing is like those are a lot of books. The Tanuk, that's a lot of scrolls. And so it's it was definitely written over a long period of time. Um so they don't and even like a single text could be like well we think it's within these 300 years. Um and then on the other hand you have rabbitical tradition that likes to more so be like well our oral tradition says that this goes back 600 years before you're saying it does. So it's like okay

20:52those both of those you know that that oral tradition that that kind of lore um that should be taken into account but we can't you can't rely on it. So what we end up with is nobody [ __ ] knows. That's the most like infuriating thing about a lot of these texts is that nobody re it's like we don't really know um whe like the book of Psalms is like contemporaneous with Plato, — right? So you're looking at like 300 BCE. Um I don't know, you know, other books probably maybe not that because this

21:32like the Psalms were written by David. — You know, a lot of those psalms are thought to have been written by King David. So that time period, you know, nobody's really sure what that time period was. Um so so so there there's these issues of dat the the rabbitical authorities and academic authorities don't really agree with themselves and they don't agree with each other. Uh but the the the main thing is that from from the the mid rush we get uh some really cool extended lore that ends up

22:05pertaining to um uh magic but uh other good examples right the cabalistic books. So people say and I've said it I'm taking it back. I'm correcting myself. People say that Cabala is Hebrew mysticism. It is not. Um if Cabala is anything because it's not unified. There are many different schools of thought. There it's a method of esoteric exigesis. Exugesis is interpretation of a text. Um, and so it's usually in a critical way, but but it's it's less critical and it's more um

22:51well, you've got in Hebrew tradition, they I'm not going to go through the Hebrew names for all of them, but they've got four different levels or layers of understanding. You know, there's the the the the uh the the the the letter of the law, you know, which is like um what it says. So, it's like, okay, Exodus was uh when Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt. Um, and you've you've got to have that. And then there's a second thing that's kind of there's a second layer that's well,

23:27there's some word play here. There's some allegorories. And I think the word is like it it actually alludes to like hint. That word means like hint. So, there's there's like this illusion. That's the second. It's it's suggestive in an allegorical manner or some entailing some kind of word play. That's the second level. The third level here we have dlash which is the actual form of uh extended commentary, extended lore. And then the fourth and the highest level is um the secret.

23:59you know, this is the this is the that equates to I think the word is sod and it equates specifically to the esoteric and that's where we get the cabala from is that fourth level of of uh uh of understanding of these texts um and it's it is extremely esoteric but it's a system it's a method of examining Hebrew scripture uh esoterically um things like the the tree of life as we get it like it's not that didn't come till way later. Um, and you've got like the saffets era. Okay, very much based

24:37on the book of Genesis, right? Because it's what does it say? God said, "Let there be light." God in Genesis, God speaks creation into existence. So the book uh formation or the sephit it's about how the words um the letters specifically of the Hebrew alphabet came into play as creative potencies in and of themselves with which creative deity god Hashem whatever you want to call it creates the physical universe. But the interesting thing is that there's there's and it says this in um in some translations of

25:17the Sephriads uh God created the universe out of the safari and sometimes that word is is rendered as derivations. Um because it's [ __ ] I'm I'm not I'm I'm gonna forget what exactly the the permutation is. But it's like there's those three consonants um sk pay and the r pay is a double letter. So it has the two pronunciations. It's either p or fu. Um like ph like an aspirated p. So you've got so he says that it says that God created the universe out of the sepharium the

26:06derivations of samk pay rash um which it's they're all they all use the same. So he it's rendered writing, number, and speech. Those are the derivations. He made the universe out of writing, number, and speech. But all three of those words in the Hebrew are same three things. So what that's telling you is that in the sephitz we're not talking about just literal letters. We're talk it's almost Pythagorean. We're talking about number sound vibration and then the physical thing

26:56itself. That's what a letter is. It's a thought taken with ink or you know chiseled into rock. It's it's manifested. Um so it's this this kind of chain that they're alluding to this derivation of number uh you know writing and and speech. So, so that that's very very interesting and it goes on to enumerate the 10 numbers and uh of the safira or the right again safar safarim this this sk pay rash uh sort of thing and a lot of people call them bowls or vessels but at the same time

27:39sephigots can also mean kind of it's got this connotation it alludes like enumeration. So you could say they're bowls, you could say they're vessels, you could say they're spheres, or you could say they're numbers, they're countings, they are enumerations. It's very Pythagorean, particularly because we also don't know when to date this book. Um, it's it's very very small in comparison. It's light reading in comparison to the Zohar. Um, but we really think it was probably put

28:09together and written around the first century. A lot of these things have a lot of first century ideas and this is the time of helenized Judaism when the Jews were the first century I think AD maybe BC uh or you know I'm using dated terms but either either in the common era or before the common era the first century were 40% of the population of Alexandria uh was was Jewish so there was a tremendous amount of Greek or Greco Egyptian henistic influence on these writings. I mean even at that time you

28:45had that's when you get the Septuagent which is the translation of Hebrew scripture into Greek and then from there you get the heckalot literature which is the which you know the work of the chariot um and and that's that whole Merkaba mysticism that that Hebrew theurgic tradition comes from that time period which is when they were doing you know uh having the same kinds of ideas and and really really uh I mean the Giuliani who are supposed to have uh composed the the called in oracles, you know, that

29:21would have fit right in there with that theoric um you know uh movement that later really gets brought to its apex by amlicus in in uh I think the fourth or fifth century see but um — so then you've got the Zohar which is kind of remarkable in that it was pseudonmously attributed to a first century rabbi Shimeon Benai but really we kind of think it was written by Moses de Leon because he was the first one to publicize it and then there are two rabbis I forget their names one rabbi is

29:58writing in reference to the works of another one who says that when he visited the wife of Moses deleon who was another rabbi in in Spain um when he visited the wife and the daughter of of him. They confessed that uh no, he he wrote this and attributed it to Shimmy and Benai because he said it would bring us, you know, prestige and profit. Um but again, you know, we don't really know who wrote it or we know that its first publication was in the 1500s in Italy. So, um so, so there's that. I

30:33mean that's voluminous — and that is where you really start to see the beginnings the makings of cabala as we understand it and particularly as it's trans transferred or translated to um to the lauranic cabala which I won't go into too far but there's three main ideas the failed first creation right of of god he fails the divine light uh he first he creates a space by attracting and expanding himself in the infinite light of the anor because it has to create an enclosure. It needs a vessel

31:08to to to in order for the the material universe to exist otherwise it's just diffuse uh potentiality for an eternity. So it it expands and contracts in this one area and that's called the tsimsum. And within that vacant space now the divine light begins to pour in and generate emanate really the saphir. And the the first attempt that this fails the the the vessels of the saphir cannot hold the divine shifa the light the inpouring of the light. They shatter. So the light gathers itself back up, but

31:44there's still pieces of it in the shards of those broken vessels. Um, and then what happens is the second creation is endeavored. It is successful, but the second creation is essentially built on top of the rubble heap of the kipot, those shards which hold within them sparks of the divine light, the shakina. So um the way the only way to release the trapped parts of the divine presence in those you know clific shards is through something called the tikun tikunam the repair of the world the um

32:21restoration of the universe and that's uh he says it's in prayer and good deeds and following the commandments and again morality and uh and living a good life living uprightly and your several stations before God and man and Um and that is how you you rescue those lights and and from that you know we get a lot of our modern cabala with a Q. Now there's a period obviously in the Renaissance with people like uh Marcelio Facino, Pico Demirandela, Yoanis Royland, Athanasius Kersher um Italians

32:54and Germans um they basically use so so the Cabala as a method of exugesus is specifically used it's on on Hebrew scripture uh but they take it out of that millu and they start applying it to Christians in scripture and they start looking at the relationship between the Egyptians and the Hebrews and Kercher says something like uh you know they spent so much time together their ritual their worship is so similar that either the Egyptians were heizing or the Hebrews were egypticizing he couldn't he

33:30couldn't tell which is a chicken or the egg situation um but they were related and they create something called the Christian cabala with a C and uh you know Norvon Rosenroth uh pens Cabala de Nudada Samuel Little Mathers translates it, starts doing his thing in the Golden Dawn. Even before then though the French guys in Martinism uh they love they were highly influenced by Yakob Burma and his his theosophy which is distinct from Blovatk's theosophy is a totally different thing that and and and and the

34:01cabala is is very present in a lot of that stuff and you even see it in masonry guys like uh John Bum and his Cabala club and I think the second or third grandmaster of the Grand Lodge of England uh John Theopilus Dagagoier is a huge part of of that society and and you know there are claims now from eminent uh Masonic researchers like Chris Pow brother Chris Powell who's talking about how Dagagoier created the hieramic legend and the third degree of masonry and uh you've got people like William

34:32Preston who's essentially the architect of our ritual and our lectures and he def he baked the cabala into that stuff and that's aver and Elias ash mole was a cabalist so it gets transferred but it gets taken out of its original millu and by the time we get to the golden dawn we're not just applying it to scripture we're applying it to the [ __ ] tarot cards we're using it on everything it becomes like this laser beam like okay we're catabalistically interpreting my glass of milk today you know um so it's

35:02and that's just the way that it comes down to us in the western esoteric traditions but there's another branch um that's outside of cabala that is very much related to magic but specifically uh the goatia uh the the grimoire tradition it's um I mean the entire ground so even in as early as the PGM right uh so you're talking about the first few centuries of of ant of of antiquity really and and and even earlier really I mean the PGM is a huge collection of texts uh that are Graco Egyptian and and

35:39come from that whole early period of of the Hellenistic period in Alexandria and surrounding areas. But even at that early time, there are spells that involve uh you know the four archangels, Raphael, Mael, Gabriel, and Uriel. There are spells that that that invoke Moses. There are spells that invoke Jesus. There are spells that invoke King Solomon. And that's where we get our grimoire tradition from. There's um this specifically comes from the Midrash literature obviously within you know

36:15first Kings and and and and second Kings you get uh and Ecclesiastes you've got um you've got collections of writings talking about how Solomon was the guy he was the son of David and he was the philosopher king he knew more than the all the potentates of the east and Egypt combined Um and because he asked God to give wisdom to him like a bride and so he was very well and it was through him that that the the second temple got built or or the the temple in Jerusalem got built really the the the the first

36:52temple was built. Um so you hear a lot of talk about the tabernacle. They were worshiping God in the wilderness. They didn't have a temple. They had the ark and they had like sheets, you know, and uh that the that the high priest um w would would would utilize in order to to go and pay worship to to God and and and uh and and so Solomon really it's really King David's idea, I think, but Solomon is the one who actually has the knowledge and and accumulates Israel as a wealthy nation enough and and and you

37:24know, he he he imports cedars from Lebanon and he employs these kings of Ty to to assist him. He formed political relationships and um and he's able to bring wealth and and a proper temple to worship their god in. Um now you get the midush literature kind of expanding on that and they call him a magician. He was a healer and a magician. And according to the Midrash literature, he received a ring from the Archangel Michael uh with um the sigil of God on it. Uh I believe it was a pentagram or

38:02hexog, some sort of lineal geometric figure, some star on it. And with that r ring he could call forth and bind and exorcise demons because that was the source of ill health was demonic uh influence or and or possession. And so he's a magician and a healer. And it's by it's through his his wisdom and and grace from God through the the archangel Michael that he's able to obtain this magic ring that helps him um exercise but also bind these demons. And you've got the the main books there is the

38:36Testament of Solomon. And uh the Testament of Solomon kind of lays the foundational groundwork um for that mythology and he it's it's really interesting. He calls forth all these demons and spirits of the deans and he interviews them and uh it's it's the the core of of demonology is in there. Now you get you get two other texts and these are all Renaissance or late medieval period texts. These are not older than that. They contain ideas that are older than that. Sure, that's how that goes, right? But they're

39:10they date these compilations of texts and a lot of them actually are are translated out of Arabic into Latin. So the the Arabs had a a huge preoccupation with Solomon. I mean, they're an Abrahamic tradition, right? Islam comes out of Judaism, right? Um, so that's uh that's a that's a huge huge thing there. So they they you know they pay attention to to those books and to those characters and so yeah they you see that even in uh in the thousand1 nights of uh the the the Arabic tales of of King

39:46Solomon and things like he's a fixture in there. So we get um the testament of Solomon and then we get the greater key and the lesser key of Solomon. Um and the greater key is more interested with uh it concerns it's more theergic. It's more about the invocation of angels and the use of pantacles which have a talismanic and and character to them and they've got these sigils and things. Uh um and again these are collections of texts. It's not just like one book that somebody wrote. Um but uh and there's a

40:22lot of them. There's a lot of different versions and translations and and uh recentensions of these texts. Uh but the big one for demonology is the lame megaton, the lesser key of Solomon. That contains all of the demonology that gets used in the um the later tradition of the grimoire tradition. there's this kind of this proto grimoire tradition that comes from about the time of the PGM and a little bit earlier up until uh the 1300s really or 1400s where the it's like proper grimmoire stuff but we're at

40:54the beginning of of laying the grimoire foundations and then you got the sword of Moses uh you've got the um the sephrazim or or sepharazzial uh and the solommonic tradition just kind of continues on from there. The Heftamaron is a really interesting book. Um, meaning seven days. It's kind of got this uh I'm pretty sure it's supposed to be worked by like a group of magicians to purify themselves and invoke the angels um uh to invoke angels for various purposes and to bind you know so that

41:34they can bind demons. There's this certain protocol where it's like, okay, you can either bind the demon by saying, I'm calling on your superior. I'm going to tell your superior you've been a a bad boy. Or, you know, I'm going to tell your superior that you're great if you work with me. And then there's there's just approaching the angel and saying like, get this demon who works under you to do this for me. And not addressing the demon like completely directly.

42:00working through the that again there's it it's it's based on this celestial hierarchy um you know the pseudoesian primarily those those hierarchies there's Greek hierarchies there's different different kinds there's Egyptian hierarchies we're working mostly within a Judeo-Christian millu here and then you've got like the arsenatoria which they're summoning angels of pentacles for um basically what they call total knowledge like you if you want to know things you can use

42:29certain sigils and and and talismans and there's angelic uh entities associated with them and you you kind of invoke and then meditate on those symbols and then you'll know everything there is to know. Um, but around the time where we get to the Arbotel, well, the Almadel is pretty cool, too, because that's an Arabic corruption of Almandel, which is essentially I think that's a part of that's a I think that's a part of the greater key of Solomon or maybe the Testament of Solomon, but it's

43:03essentially it's essentially um an altar. It it describes the construction and consecration of the altar that Solomon used to summon angels. Um, so that's an interesting one. And then I would say the last grimmoire before things start to change is the arbetel uh or the the arbetel of the magic of the ancients that has a very distinctly um uh Calvinist and Renaissance. It's Christian. It's Renaissance. It reaches back to hermitism, neoplatanism, but it's got this enlightenment or renaissance, I should

43:43say, humanism in it and Calvinist Christianity that is drenched in paraselis, drenched in in alchemy. So, it's a different kind of magic. And it's really it's from that type of like planetary magic with the Olympic spirits and using hermetic using neoplatonic uh using rosier paracelian paradigms. That's really what magic from then that point on that's what magic gets really influenced and defined by and it's not until really this Sam Mathers is really the one who kicks it off. He translates um the the

44:24keys of Solomon, the greater and the lesser keys. Uh and actually he doesn't publish them. I think he publishes I think he he he publishes the greater key, but there's the Lamegaton, the Goatia that he um Alistar Crowley steals from him and publishes under his own name. So Mathers never got to do that. Crowley completely plagiarized him. Same way he did with 777. same way he did with the Golden Dawn curriculum uh in in his orders and he just took it and ran with it. But it's that period where

44:56there like an interest in like demonic conjuration uh comes back and of course you know his work with Mats's work with um the uh the Abramelon is a big thing. That's kind of when it all started to fall apart for him too. — And so so the lameon was a was originally Hebrew. — Yeah. I mean that's a Greek word. We don't really know what it means, but um I I hear it more as the lean — because means to say to speak — um but but you know and these things are

45:31subject to corruption especially if it's not the the the native language but the lematon is the lesser key of Solomon. It's also called the uh the goatia which goatia is a Greek word. Goatea was sorcery as distinct from maga or or even theoria. So, Goatia like Jake Stratton Kent makes a point in his um geosophia uh Argo of magic volume two the one about the Greeks and he says for all intents and purposes when we really look at what was going on in the and and goatia they're the same thing they use

46:09the same hierarchies they use this yada yada yada yes but no you're [ __ ] wrong in a big [ __ ] way and I'm sorry he's dead he can't defend himself So, I'll go headtohead with anybody else that wants to step up in his place. But the main [ __ ] difference is intention. It's what you're using. You know, if I'm using my stove in a pot to make pasta or if I'm using my stove in a pot to like, I don't know, boil water to clean clothes. Just because I'm using the same

46:37technology does not mean I'm doing the same [ __ ] thing, you know? So, he's very very wrong there. and and I throughout his books, as aerudite as they are, I mean, it's they're drenched in like his bias, you know, he's actually it's I've got this punk rock feeling from him of like, you know, um this sense of outward of like outer hostility he has. He he feels, you can really read it in his writing, um that he feels like people aren't into what I like because they think it's wrong, but

47:10that's not really the case. And it's like, well, I get I get why you would have like this kind of adverse reaction to that, but at the same time, you can't just say it's all the same thing. It's clearly not. Um, goatia is the summoning, conjuration or evocation of uh, you know, really any level of the spirit hierarchy towards the end of personal gain for an item, for an end goal, for knowledge. Okay, I'm going to leave that where it is. I'm not going to comment on on on on any value judgment.

47:42Fiora is the use of that technology for spiritual purposes specifically sp and I'm I'm not talking not mincing words here. This was a mode of ascent that was supposed to bring you to heis union with God. Uh or right, Yamicus kind of says once you link up with your diamond, your diamond can as an intermediary take you to a further sphere and hey, you might become a god there. You that might be your new diamond might be a god, you know? So, we're not talking about the same [ __ ] things here. Uh but but you

48:18that I mean that's the difference between Goatia and Theodoria. — Got a few different wonderments. Um okay so in terms of cabala what it is at least early on kabala largely a method of exigesis of the text that you had said or like what about like an interpretation or an organizational archetypal blueprint of reality like prior to the text things were oral right um — that's the claim. Yeah. — And like depicting these apparent aspects of God or reality like we have other models and things

49:07like neoplatanism or pltonism and they've got sort of their own spheres of organizational structures, right? — So — yeah. — Well, no, sorry. Go ahead. — No, no, you go. — I see what you're getting at. I think a lot of that is based on so there's a couple of different things right we talk about the creative potencies of the Hebrew letters of the alphabet which is really I mean to me it's it's not literal you know it's pointing towards something that has to

49:37do with number vibration which is Pythagorean Pythagoras found out that harmony has to do with ratio ratio is number. He basically said, "I've got a string here. You know what happens when I press right here in the middle and half it? It makes the same [ __ ] note at a higher pitch. What's that all about? And if I move it down here, it makes, you know, this is a third." He didn't have those classifications, but you know, fourth, fifth, perfect fifth. You know, like it's just going up the

50:16line until like you get to the octave. That's why these things are numbered because harmony is predicated on number. That is what I think the helanized Judeaic tradition took from Pythagoreanism. Neopyagoranism at that time, neoplatanism, right? Yamicus was writing about this [ __ ] So, it's not it's not specifically Pythagoreans. It became a part of the intellectual culture of of Helenism. Um and and so I think that that's what it's alluding to. Uh so there's that which isn't an

50:51organized system. The closest we get to organization there is just the Hebrew letters of the alphabet and their division into vowels uh mutes and and consonants or as they say the three the three mother letters the the uh seven doubles and the 12 symbols. And there's all sorts of later stuff that we do with them in like Golden Dawn magic, especially in friends garden system um as well. But uh really what you're thinking of is the tree of life and the tree of life doesn't come until much later. But we've

51:24got the Sephiroth, but there's no me there's no mention of like in like for instance in the Laurianic conception, the Sephiroth were like like nested bowls. It wasn't this lineal diagram yet that came at a much later stage. And to be honest with you, I find that it's based on the hennads of proclas. It's it's also derivative of — would that be like with the exception of dot or — well dot isn't is you're right. So 10 there's 10 spheres on that but then there'd be like what

52:00nine and any ads, right? No, well not I'm not not the eneads. The hennads. — Oh, okay. My bad. — So, so enads were the writings of Platinus that were grouped into nine segments of nine by his student Porfrey after his death. The Greek word for the letter nine is ina. — Okay. Yeah. — Now hen or na now in modern Greek means one. So that's so the Ana is nine, na naad or or henad is um is one. So it's it's really we're talking about monads if you want to you

52:43want to look at it that way. — Is is his the nads is that like its own work or is it contained within the other works? — The inads or the hennads? — The nad enads. So the the inads are they're kind of arbitrarily they're just named after the way that Pfury kind of arbitrarily arranged them. Nine books of nine. — The other one, sorry, not the — nine. The hennads, — yeah, — are are a proan kind of derivation of of all the philosophy that came before him,

53:18which is pretty impressive. And that I believe is in the um — the elements of theology that he wrote, elements of Platonic theology. So that's not a work, that's an idea. And that idea that idea is basically what the Sephi wrote are based on. So each each sephira is a hennad and they've got these chains of of correspondences and causality and things like that. So the cabal is Greek. It's it's arguably it's worked into a wonderful beautiful easily accessible um system that we can use in this

53:55lineoglyph of the tree of life which took like a millennia or or two to figure out and get right. But uh it's not exclusively uniquely Judeaic. It absolutely if we're if we're thinking of the historical record and we're thinking of Greece as an empire, which it was, the Jews didn't go around conquering people. They didn't the Jews never had an an empire, you know, they never influenced thought like that. — Yeah. I always I always think of the Greeks as as uh being post

54:32Hebrew culture. So I in my head when I think about I think of like the Hebrews first and then the Greeks. But it's probably because of the duration of and the success of the Greek culture or — well you know the thing is it's like um they again you know if you you're you're the issue is biblical history and the fact that there is no way to date this stuff. Um, now there are like Hebrew remains that, you know, I believe they've classified uh or they've found um like the remains of a of of Hebrew um

55:14living quarters in ancient Egypt. Uh but you know like Egypt was also around during the time of Greece. And the thing is like there were two proto civilizations in ancient Greece too. um the Minoans who we really know very little about and are they're saying like are not actually like genetically related to to modern Greeks and then there's the Mcinians and those are are like where modern Greeks come from so to speak. Uh we're it's an oversimplification but um so in the same way there's like protohebrew script

55:52there's you know protosemitic peoples but when the history gets laid down And when when the the things come into translation and when the thought kind of meets, you know, is um we don't have that on the historic record um as early as we do the Greek stuff. It's not there in in the the Hebrew stuff. — Yeah. Yeah. It's funny because like it totally makes sense. I don't know. In my mind, it's kind of like an error like cuz I've seen like these old um papyrie or whatever like or uh old

56:36looking texts that have these different variations of Hebrew cabalas that are kind of laid out differently than how we see the tree now. And then I guess in my mind I just think like, oh, old Hebrew text. And then I think Hebrew and I think old language and then but of course like people these days still write Hebrew. I mean just because you see something in a Hebrew text doesn't mean that it's it's older or anything then in terms of like the ideas and the dissemination and all that. So yeah

57:10that's funny. — Yeah. I mean a lot of a lot of the times too it's like you don't even know just because it's written in Hebrew doesn't mean that we're speaking Hebrew. — Yeah. You know, it's it's you know, Aramaic plays in it it figures in into into those texts, particularly in in the New Testament written in Greek about Jewish people who were speaking Aramaic, you know. So, it's uh it there's so much context, — yeah, — that you need in order to wrap your head

57:36around this [ __ ] you know? But um but but things do get clearer. They don't get more definite, — but they get they get clearer because it's like when you start out at a position of like no academic kind of, you know, uh, research being used or no academic method, no critical method of examining stuff. It's like you think you know a lot of [ __ ] but you're really having a Santa Claus experience where it's like you found out something was a lie and then you go over here and

58:09you're like, "Oh my god, the Anunneri George Bush, you know, and it's like that's fine. That's a period that you got to go through." Then you start really getting the lay of the land and little by little you incorporate this the scholarly stuff and then you're like, "Yes, leveling up. Things are more definite." And then at a certain level, you hit like you're like way up there with the latest research. You've read all the [ __ ] classics in the field.

58:35You're familiar with all the scholars that made their mark and the new ones that are up and coming and the latest stuff. And you kind of like go over the peak of the roller coaster and you're like, "Okay, so now I see that there is as much consensus in the academic world as there is in the rest of the world. They're just saying we're the professionals, but none of them [ __ ] agree, you know?" So it's it's like wait I I thought I had it but now it's like — now it's like oh there is no there is no

59:01definite there is you'll never get there but things pictures do become clearer you know like this idea that Christianity and cabalism at their root are the product of Hellenism Greek Greco Egyptian thought is what and then the — Greco Egyptian thought uh through a Jewish community is what brought about the Cabala and Christianity. But it's still, you know, it's just it's water through a different vessel. You know, it's the same it's the same thing. And then it reaches its it's

59:40it's really it's apex expression in in uh what for my my money gnostic Christianity of the first few centuries. — It's a good way to put it. Water through a different vessel. Um, so in terms of some of these older Hebrew texts, like the ones that we've kind of gone over, I'm sure, like you said, the majority of them are clearly commentary andor uh expansions on previous uh texts like the original, I don't know, like the like the Torah or things like this in terms of their contents.

1:00:21Um, I find or I would find really interesting any ones that are definitely up for debate. Like, are there any that seem to really hold their own unique context that just seem kind of really like, oh, this seems very or almost unrelated like it's its own thing or is there anything like that? I would say that about the arbatital, but the thing the main thing is um because that's got that paracelian alchemical magic piece to it and it's got that renaissance humanism, Calvinist Christianity and that Renaissance

1:00:57futurism, you know, that like that's really when this whole like progressive thing starts. It's in its I mean like prenatal phases back then. But this idea now that we we call progressivism, I mean that starts then there in the Renaissance. Um uh but so there's there's a bit of that. Uh but um the issue is that nothing, you know, we you caught I mean you caught me on a great day because obviously my head is fresh with this [ __ ] I've been writing yesterday. Yesterday I finished up the

1:01:36chapter on the Goatia and Grimoires and and submitted it to the publisher and today I'm working on the the chapter on Cabala. So this is all great great timing. But but uh the thing the thing that you find when you're when you're isolating a subject for the purposes of analytical examination, it kind of makes you forget for a minute that nothing grows in a vacuum. Nothing is truly isolated. So I mean even in grimoire collections of texts — Yeah. — Yeah. Even in grimoire collections of

1:02:15texts that are uh in the 1400s, they're still predicated on ideas that came about in you know the time of writing Genesis and the time of of you know when the hermetica the corpus hermeticum was written and those ideas are so but we do find that they're they're based in th in that specifically that Judeo helenistic and when I say henistic I mean I'm not saying helenic. I'm not saying helenic. Helenic is exclusively Greek. Helenistic is is more at least I use it to mean Greco Egyptian and then even Greco

1:02:55Egyptian Roman — you know that whole period. Uh so so there's it's really it's really from that period. Um that's the seedbed of that is the genesis of everything. It's like it's like the it's like all the DNA of you know it's like when a sperm and an egg meet it's like okay this is this contains all the potentialities for what this being could be in the future. When I would say Greece was the sperm Egypt was the egg. When those two things met it created the the uh western occult the

1:03:28western esoteric traditions. — Yeah. Yeah. Uh, I had always personally been a little confused on the term henistic, but now that you clarify it like that, it makes a lot of sense. It's like that fusion of those different like the Greco Egyptian fusion type thing. — Yeah. Well, well, the thing is that scholars for years have used the the term Henistic basically to refer to the the point of the Alexandrian conquests um at around 332 B.CE. CE of Persia and Egypt because Persia controlled Egypt

1:04:06for like 200 years. They had already conquered them. So when Alexander got Persia, he got Egypt with it. And uh so he goes in there and he you know he he installs his you know his his thing. He lets he brings back Pharaohic rule. Actually uh the Persians ruled as foreigners. They didn't allow the far the Pharaohic tradition to continue. But Alexander actually says you can you guys can have your pharaohs back. But guess what? I'm a pharaoh now. — So, uh, but but, um, uh, Chris Brennan, who has made enough

1:04:40of a splash in in in this world that we're in, uh, in the occult and specifically in astrology, his book, Henistic Astrology, I think came out in 2017. He actually uses it to include uh, he includes the the Roman period. Rome kind of rather quickly uh cleans up, you know, they take over the TMIC dynasty, but the thing is that they love the Greeks, so they let them do their thing and they just they they mine the place for resources, tax the [ __ ] out of it. But at the same the same token, they

1:05:13contribute in terms of infrastructure and wealth. So whatever was there just be it just grows. It becomes inflamed. the Romans uh you know they built bigger temples for um the theologists and stuff like that but but Chris Brennan uses the term henistic to include all of that period uh until I guess the anti-pagan edicts of Theodosius around the 700s all that [ __ ] falls apart but academics only consider well at least the stuff that I've read from the a couple of years ago they were using the term henistic to

1:05:47describe um the Alexandrian conquests up to the the the conquests that Rome had of them. So that's just an important distinction for anybody that get because the terminology can get confusing. — Yeah. Um, something interesting to cross reference is Yambbleian theology versus the Heckot literature or the chariot literature because they have this system of or the way they describe it as a descent to the throne versus an ascent. So is that like a language thing or is it mean in terms of meaning is it

1:06:30basically indicative of the same thing or how do you make sense of that or is it Yeah. Just any thoughts on like how those two things kind of cross uhly.