A. S. Raleigh

This was an interesting read, back in the early 2000s when I picked it up. It's like many other books of western esoterica and similar subjects, in that it draws on old ideas of magic and pseudo-science, but builds on it and tries to systematize it, while taking itself pretty seriously. It does a better job of systematizing than most such books, though, which I found intriguing. I've found some inspiration for ideas (in fictional contexts) in this book, and having read it makes me more able show more to understand the thought processes (and deficiencies) of certain types of conspiracy theory lunatics on the internet.

If you want to understand more about the "secret workings" of the world, I recommend reading materials associated with the now-contemporary (as of the twenty-teens) rationalism movement, negative feedback loops in the way commercial machine learning systems are contributing to the radicalization of society, and somewhat heterodox but very informative books about real-world technological decentralization subjects such as Homebrew Industrial Revolution and Against Intellectual Property.

If you want to understand more about mystical worldviews and get some academically-leaning education in ideas that might help inspire fantastical fiction or just provide a very nerdy form of pure entertainment, though, this book is a good read. show less

THE SPECULATIVE ART OF ALCHEMY

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

The sermon of Hermes About the Common Mind,'
deals with the Common or General Mind as the principle
or Energy radiating from the God Beyond All Name,
and its relation to the individual mind in man, as well
as all other forms of life, in so far as they are dominated
by Mind. The position taken by Hermes is that the
thinking of the Supreme Divinity is radiated forth as
Mind, possessing the same essentiality as does the very
Esse of God. This Mind it is show more that dominates all the
creative life of Cosmos. All else is the product of this
Mind. This is termed the Common Mind, because it is
the Mind common to all. In man it becomes individual-
ized as the mind, which becomes the energizing principle
of the soul. We must never confuse it with the soul, for
it is not a part of the soul, but rather an Energy entering
into the soul and energizing it to act contrary to its own
nature. The soul has three modes of psychic activity;
the natural mode, which is the action of the soul through
its own nature, that is, the spontaneous genesis of the soul
within herself; the sensuous, or the psychic reaction of
the soul to the energizing of the Psyche by the senses
particularly those of the body; and the mental, which
is the action of the soul, when energized by the mind,
which means the energizing of her by the Mind. This
leads to three orders of life for every human soul. There
is the natural life which she leads when she is not
interferred with by the senses, the spontaneous soul life. Next
we find the degenerate life of the soul which she leads
when her psyche is energized by the senses of the body,
g in the imaging of the senses or their objects
in the soul, so that her functioning is determined by
resultin show less