Ditching the Planetary Weight

This is the fifteenth part of my essay series “Inner Work with the Planets”. If you haven’t read the earlier parts yet, I suggest you start with part 1 to get the most out of this essay.

The last essay ended on a cliffhanger, with the (as of yet unanswered) question “How did the old Hermeticists approach this ascent of their divine part?”. This time, we’ll pick up where we left off…

First, though, I need to stress something: As you might remember from one of the very first essays, there is a lot we don’t know about Hermeticism, the Hermetica, and especially about Hermetic practice back in the day.

In particular, we don’t really know what exactly the old Hermeticists did or didn’t do – and I mean this quite literally: Where the Hermetica only abstract philosophical or spiritual scriptures to them? Or did they have some kind of Hermetic “practices”, and if so, which ones?

Of course, scholars have attempted to answer these questions for a long time. But, as I laid out earlier, scholars are only humans, too, just like the rest of us. Their work is based on their cultural and societal background and worldview, and their results and assumptions follow certain trends.

While for a long time, the basic assumption of scholarly mainstream was that Hermeticism had been a purely philosophical movement, in recent years, the trend has been to assume that the old Hermeticist actually “practised” Hermeticism in some form or other.

(If you’d like to read up on some of these ideas, Christian Bull’s “The Tradition of Hermes Trismegistus” and Wouter Hanegraaff’s “Hermetic Spirituality and the Historical Imagination” are good starting points. Your best bet for getting them for a reasonable price might be a library, or inter-library loan, though.)

But while the arguments of these modern scholars sound convincing, the reality is that we simply don’t know for sure whether there was a living Hermetic practice, and how it might have looked like in detail (and probably never will).

The reality is also that while the arguments and conclusions of current scholars might seem like the eternal pinnacle of scholarly wisdom to us, scholars in a few decades or a couple of centuries might well turn up their noses at them, see them as hopefully outdated, and instead proclaim (yet again) that Hermeticism has only ever been a philosophical current, which has of course always been absolutely crystal clear from factor X in Hermetic scripture Y, combined with the latest scholarly findings about religious life in late Egypt, and how anybody ever could assume anything else is beyond them… 😉

Thus we have some modern scholars and their ideas and assumptions about Hermetic practice to work with – well knowing that there is no “settled science” in cases like this, and they might be fully off the mark (and we, too, by extension, if we base our beliefs solely on their results).

Luckily for us, this isn’t a scholarly treatise, but an essay series about inner work with the planets. As such, we don’t have to get everything “right” or “correct”. We don’t have to fathom The One And Only Truth About Hermeticism (and we also don’t have to please the current scholarly mainstream… 😉 ).

Instead, it’s sufficient if we capture the Hermetic spirit, align with Hermetic ideas and concepts, and end up with something useful for ourselves. This gives us a considerable amount of leeway in our Hermetic approach to inner work.

Of course, the fact that this isn’t a scholarly treatise also gives us the leeway to use some things which aren’t fully rational-scientific-whatnot compatible. Things like a common sense view on human behavior, or our own knowledge of common human behavior, e.g. in form of the goals people frequently pursue through occultism and spirituality, and the methods they frequently use.

Common sense, and some experience with human behavior (not just in the occult and spiritual realms) tell us that if there is something to tinker with, some people will inevitably do so. If there are things to try out, some people will.

(Ever been close to an emergency stop button? No matter how big a font you use to label it “FOR EMERGENCY USE ONLY”, let enough people come close to it and somebody will inevitably press that button and shut the whole shebang down. Apparently, if there’s a button, it needs to be pressed… 😉 )

And if there is a way to reach a better life, either now or in the after-life (preferably both), then some people will go for it.

Now, the Hermetica themselves don’t really promise people a better life right now, while they are still in material incarnation. But of course, the people writing and reading these texts were far from stupid. They were also willing and well able to read (and write!) spiritually and philosophically complex texts, to contemplate them and to learn from them.

At some point, they will inevitably have noticed that their ongoing work with the Hermetic ideas and concepts does also have some practical influence on their present lives in material form – and, presumably, to the better (if they had constantly gotten bad results, it’s hard to imagine that anybody would have bothered to write these things down, isn’t?).

And thus they would have had very good reasons to pursue some kind of planetary ascent even during their lives, instead of just waiting for the afterlife… After all, if things give positive results, it makes sense to go for them, right?

But before we dive into how they achieved such an ascent, let’s quickly recapitulate the different kinds of ascents and descents we discussed earlier:

In Hermetic belief, your very first descent down to material earth happened before your first incarnation, when your divine being chose to come down here, to be of dual nature, and to “create” in the physical world. The corresponding ascent is one you haven’t experienced yet, since you’re clearly still part of this material world – it’s the ascent after your very last incarnation, when your divine part ascends back up to the Divine where you belong.

This descent and ascent are very well described in the Hermetica. For example, there is a passage in the first treatise of the Corpus Hermeticum which discusses the specific vices that are left behind in each planetary sphere at the final ascent back to the Divine.

(There is also a method behind the order of the planets – but we’ll get to this another time.)

The second kind of ascent and subsequent descent happens between lives, although it’s not spelled out as such in the Hermetica:

First you move up through the planetary spheres again, although not all the way up to the Divine – just high enough to ditch the planetary coins you picked up on your prior descent, and to become your true, pure Self again. Then you descend down again into incarnation. And on this subsequent way down, you again pick up some coins of all the planets, which will then influence your next incarnation and your next life with their specific vices and virtues.

Descending at all might seem like a huge burden – and in some ways, it is. But it’s also a necessity: If you want to reach material state, you’ll need to be of dual nature. And without reaching material state, there is no creating down here for us.

Of course, there is also the fact that each new descent into a new life allows our divine selves to pick new planetary coins, try on new things, learn new lessons… something we’d never be able to do in our purely divine states.

In other words: Yes, sometimes life sucks – but it’s the price we pay for experiencing something very special.

The third kind of ascent-descent pair is the one we discussed last time, and it leads us right back to the question we started out with. These are the ascents and descents we (consciously) take during our lifetimes. So far in this series, we’ve mostly done them in contemplation, in reflection, and (if you’ve been very proactive 😉 ) in meditation.

In any case, the old Hermeticists were smart humans just like us (well, maybe smarter than me – you never know!). And since they were into writing and reading these highly complex philosophical and spiritual texts, I think it’s a safe bet to assume that they, too, used the same methods of contemplation, reflection and probably some form of meditation in order to deal with their planetary coins (although, in all fairness, they did not call them like that).

But they also used another method. And in order to understand it, we need to take a step back into the mindset of the people back then…

In ancient times, the Divine was very real for people. They didn’t just believe in deities, spirits, daimones and all sorts of other higher and lower beings. They also believed that these divine beings were “real” in the sense that they could be accessed and experienced while one was alive on earth.

In fact, their everyday experience included divine beings, spirits and all other sorts of encounters as part of their everyday lives, from spring nymphs to encounters with incarnate deities to whatnot else.

For most people in our society, the Divine is very far away “up there”, if they believe in its existence at all. For people in ancient times, the Divine was all around (and within) them, right here, in each moment. Naturally, this included their perception and experience of the planetary deities and spirits.

You might remember that at the end of one of the very first essays, I wrote that this series will be suitable for you, whether you believe in the actual existence of planetary deities or not.

(Well, I said it wouldn’t matter whether you “believe” in Hermeticism or whether you think these texts are spiritually “true”, but this does, of course, also include a belief in the existence of the planetary deities.)

Thus when we’re talking about an “ascent through a planet’s sphere”, you might as well consider this in an abstract way, e.g. as an interaction with planetary archetypes or some such thing. For the old Hermeticists though, this meant, quite literally, an encounter with another being.

(When I wrote earlier that we’ve been dancing with Venus and practicing combat with Mars, this was only half a joke!)

The next step for them, then, is kinda straightforward: If there are planetary deities, and if they are the benevolent brothers and sisters of your divine spark… then why not get a helping hand from them on your way up?

Especially if these deities aren’t omnipotent, but can to some extent be coerced into doing your bidding – which is what occultists back then routinely believed, as evidenced e.g. by the plethora of corresponding spells and rituals in the Greek Magical Papyri.

Thus the logical next step, besides contemplation, reflection and meditation, would be to devise rituals which help the performer to ascend through the planetary spheres. (I mean, what else would a reasonable human do but grab this opportunity by the horns and go for it? 😉 )

Is this what the old Hermeticists did? Well, as I said above at length, we don’t know for sure, although recent research and scholarly debate support this claim.

But from a very common sense view of human nature, I find it very likely. In a society where getting favours from spirits was “standard” occult behavior, where people felt the presence of deities and spirits as real and communicated with them, Hermetic practitioners would have taken it for granted that entering a planetary sphere means to actually “meet” the respective planetary daimon.

Thus, in any ascent, invoking the planetary spirits and asking them for help and/or placating them would have been their standard approach – while on the other hand, an ascent through the planetary spheres wouldn’t have been possible without encountering their spirits, deities or other higher beings.

Of course, while us humans have a divine part which can well hold up to planetary deities, we’re also of dual nature and limited by our material bodies and earthly parts. And while this is the case, the planetary deities do have some considerable influence over us. Approaching them in secure ways would seem prudent, then. And being humans just like the rest of us, the old Hermeticists did this against the backdrop of their society and culture, with methods in commonsense use at their time, proven to be safe and effective.

Certain kinds of rituals would fit this bill, judging by methods commonly in use by occultists back then:

For example, it was not uncommon to invoke or approach the planetary deities chanting certain kinds of vowels (as can be seen in various examples e.g. in the Greek Magical Papyri). Of course, the ascent would happen in the order of the planets, up until the higher spheres (of the fixed stars or even higher up), since this order was a given fact. And since there seems to have been a Hermetic “scene” back in the day, although we don’t know how large or lively it really was, there might have been group rituals, or teacher-student spiritual work.

Again, all of this is common sense, based on how human nature works, and on some information we have from back then.

And, not surprisingly, all of these elements are part of some of the more recently discovered Hermetica, e.g. the so-called “Discourse on the Eigth and the Ninth”, on which the modern scholars like Bull and Hanegraaff base their notion that Hermeticism was very much a “lived” and “practised” tradition, and not just a philosophical and abstract one.

The Discourse describes such a ritual, where a teacher guides his pupil through a planetary ascent, up to the eigth level of the fixed stars, and then beyond it to the ninth level, closer to the Divine. There are some intricacies to this text which would lead us too far from our topic today, and we won’t go into them and instead only focus on what’s relevant for us.

(Please do feel free to read it for yourself, though, to get an idea of what we’re talking about. After all, Hermeticism is about acquiring personal knowledge of the world and of the Divine, right? 😉 )

But if we, today, have such rituals at hand… why don’t we just perform them, just like people (presumably) did back then, and (hopefully) achieve the same results through these rituals as the old Hermeticists did? And what kind of results did they get (or hope to get) from these rituals in the first place? 😀

Well, there are three main issues to this.

The first is that laying around for about two millenia, even in dry desert climate, isn’t very conducive to the health and integrity of old scriptures. And the way some of them have been found and handled afterwards hasn’t exactly been helpful in preserving them in pristine condition either.

Thus there are, quite simply, parts missing. Sometimes scholars can guess which words those are, sometimes they can’t – and sometimes the missing parts are way too large to allow any meaningful guesses at all.

Secondly, the Hermetica have been written by ancient people, with their background, in their languages. Just like any humans, they took some stuff for granted and it might not even have occured to them to mention certain things in their writings (hey, everybody does things this way, right?).

In some cases, we might be able to make educated guesses about certain omissions – in other cases, we might not even be aware that something important was omitted from the text at all.

Also, what we (= you and me, unless you are fluent e.g. in old Coptic or certain dialects of ancient Egyptian) have to work with are translations. But each translation is, at the same time, an interpretation. Plus, would you bet the success of a powerful ritual (and potentially your own well-being) on the fact that said ritual works equally well in modern English than in ancient Greek?

And thirdly, while the rituals are very specific in some ways, they are also very evasive in others. Whether this was on purpose, or because everybody knew how certain things worked and thus there was no need to write them down, or whether some things were best (or only) taught in person… well, that’s anyone’s guess.

We also don’t know anything about such relevant things as necessary preparations, aftercare, or similar things, or to what extent facilitation through an experienced practitioner or teacher might be necessary in order for the rituals to work.

So while the rituals give us a very good idea of Hermetic thought and of their approaches to a ritual planetary ascent (and subsequent descent), they aren’t necessarily workable as they are, at least not for us in our day and time.

There is yet another issue, though. While humans will always gonna human, the times have changed. Our culture, worldview and language are different from those of the old Hermeticists and their contemporaries. While some people do perform old rituals more or less in their original state (to the extent it can be determined), I feel that if something like Hermeticism is worth pursuing, it’s worth pursuing as a living tradition, and not as a dead one.

This includes studying the old texts, the structure and purpose of the rituals (and performing them if we are so inclined) – but it also allows us to come up with new ways to approach Hermeticism as a living tradition for our age.

(And I can gladly report that it’s indeed possible to create working Hermetic rituals nowadays – but more on that below…)

So what did the old Hermetists get or expect from performing these rituals of ascent? The answer is right there in the Hermetica, e.g. in the Discourse on the Eigth and the Ninth: They were hoping to gain true understanding, knowledge and wisdom, to perceive the Divine and the Truth, and to reach immortality in being reconciled with the Divine.

The ritual ascent itself seems to have served as a teaser for what happens after their last incarnation, but also as a means to easing their after-death ascent by paving the way for their divine souls to ascend back to where they belong.

Did they also see improvements or changes before their deaths, i.e. in their life on earth?

The Hermetica are a bit more tight-lipped about these mundane aspects, alas. But given that part of the Hermetic practice seems to have been based on reflection, on working with the planetary spheres and their influences on our lives, but also on piety, good conduct and good deeds, I think it’s safe to assume that these people didn’t just clean up their earthly acts to the extent possible, but also that the path of Hermeticism, if pursued in earnest, must have lead to a higher level of self-reflection. And once we have a clearer eye on our own faults, our actions and habits, “improving” our lives becomes much easier…

So what does all of this mean for us?

First, I stand by what I wrote at the beginning: You don’t have to believe in the infallible spiritual truth of Hermeticism in order to gain something from working with the ideas and concepts in this essay series. I.e. if all you should ever do is seriously contemplate and reflect on the things we discuss here, it’s very likely that your life will change for the better in some regards.

In fact, the remainder of this essay series will mostly focus on things which don’t require you to “believe” in the planetary deities, or to do anything with them or about them as deities.

I.e. for the most part, you’ll be perfectly safe assuming they are archetypes or something along these lines, if this works best for you. The upcoming essays will contain a lot of material for you to work with, and approaches and methods to put the content of this series to productive use in your life.

(And just to be clear, if anything leads beyond this, it’ll be clearly marked and easy to avoid if you’re not comfortable with it!)

If you should be open to a more spiritual approach to the matter, there will be some additional ideas for you in a later essay (which you’re free to pick up or ignore, as really everything I write about here… 😉 ).

(As I hinted at above, I’ve also almost finished work on a ritual series for the planetary ascent. This, too, will at some point be available for those of you who’d like to dive deeper into Hermetic spirituality and inner work…)

But the focus of the rest of this essay series will be on practical approaches to inner work, based on the Hermetic concepts and ideas we’ve discussed so far.

Will this lead you straight to contact with the Divine, as the old Hermeticists were hoping to achieve through some of their rituals?

Well, that’s possible, but unlikely, as we’ll mostly focus on practical things right here – and a contemplative and reflective approach will give you different results from a ritual and spiritual approach, especially as the latter works more directly with the respective planetary entities. (They are both compatible, though, as evidenced by the content of the Hermetica, and if you want a more spiritual approach on top, the upcoming set of rituals will cover that for you).

So what is it you can expect from the work I propose here in this series? What kind of effects will you see if you do the work? Or, more practically: Will it improve your life – and if so, how?

These are very good questions – and we’ll get to them next time… 😉

As always, I’m looking forward to your thoughts, remarks, and questions in the comment section. We’ll be back in two weeks for the next essay in the series. See you then!

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Image: Freddy Rezvanian on Unsplash