Hermetic Principles: Understanding Mind, Creation, and Reality

The mind reflects the cosmos, enabling creation and transformation through understanding mental principles and universal laws.

### The Interconnection of Mind, Universe, and Spirituality: Insights from Hermeticism and Alchemy
* 🧠 "The universe is mental," suggesting that our minds are **reflections of the cosmos** and play a **crucial role in the act of creation** within our physical reality.
* 🌌 The Hermetic literature, a fusion of ancient Egyptian and Greek thought, serves as a time capsule of spiritual ideas, emphasizing the principle **"As Above, So Below,"** which illustrates the **interconnectedness of all things**.
* 📜 In 1908, William Walker Atkinson's book, The Kabbalah, distilled seven core principles of Egyptian hermeticism, highlighting that the **mind is a tool of causation and creation**, connecting us to a **higher mind known as Nous**.
* 🔮 The practice of mentalism teaches that our minds not only operate within the brain but also have a **non-local existence**, allowing us to **access information beyond ordinary sensory experience**.
* 🌠 Alchemy, viewed as a transformative process, asserts that we can **replicate the universe's creation on a smaller scale**, emphasizing that **everything flows and has its opposites**, leading to a **deeper understanding of existence**.
* 🔄 The principle of polarity illustrates that **emotional states can be transformed by recognizing their opposites**, allowing for **personal empowerment and emotional mastery** in our lives.
* 🌈 Near-death experiences and mediumship reveal the **blurred lines between life and death**, suggesting a **continuous consciousness that transcends physical existence**, affirming the belief that we are all part of a **larger cosmic reality**.
* 💫 Ultimately, the insights from hermeticism and alchemy encourage us to **explore our potential for creation and transformation**, recognizing that we are **reflections of a greater universal mind** and that our **thoughts and intentions shape our experiences**.

### Exploring the Depths of Consciousness: Insights from Near-Death Experiences and Kabbalistic Principles
* 🌌 Many individuals who have had near-death experiences report feeling **detached from their physical bodies** while being aware of their surroundings, often describing a **passage through a tunnel into a brilliant light filled with love and peace**.
* 👥 In this state, they encounter loved ones who appear in non-physical forms and undergo a life review, where they see their actions from the perspectives of others, often guided by a **compassionate being** who poses the question, "**How have you learned to love?**"
* 🔄 Interestingly, many who return to life cite their **children as the primary reason for choosing to come back**, despite the allure of staying in the light.
* 🎵 The Kabbalistic principle of Rhythm suggests that life’s challenges are balanced by **opportunities for growth**, indicating that every hardship is compensated by a **positive experience or lesson**.
* 🌀 This principle also connects present experiences with past lives, emphasizing that our **current struggles may be linked to previous incarnations**, providing a **deeper understanding of our life’s rhythm**.
* 🔍 Hypnosis and past-life regression are explored as tools for understanding one’s life narrative, allowing individuals to **break free from old patterns** and **gain insights into their current challenges**.
* 🔮 The discussion also touches on the significance of tarot as a means of **accessing the subconscious**, where images and symbols serve as a **healing mechanism**, facilitating **transformation through shared experiences**.
* ⚖ Lastly, the principle of **Gender in Kabbalah** highlights the interplay of **active and passive forces** in creation, suggesting that our **conscious thoughts and subconscious influences** shape our reality, thus inviting a **holistic understanding of existence**.

the all is mind. The universe is mental. As Above, So Below; as below, so above. Nothing rests; everything moves; everything vibrates. Everything is dual; everything has poles; everything has its pair of opposites. Like and unlike are the same; opposites are identical in nature but different in degree. Extremes meet; all truths are but half-truths; all paradoxes may be reconciled. Everything flows out and in; everything has its ties. All things rise and fall; the pendulum swing manifests in everything. The measure of the swing to the right is the measure of the swing to the left. Rhythm compensates. Every cause has its effect; every effect has its cause. Everything happens according to law; chance is but a name for law not recognized. There are many planes of causation, but nothing escapes the law. Gender is in everything; everything has its masculine and feminine principles. Gender manifests on all planes. [Music] When the ancient Greeks encountered Egypt, that civilization was as ancient to them as the Greeks are to us. In the late stages of ancient Egypt, Egypt was presided over by a Greek.

ruling class and scribes from this ruling class wrote down some of the philosophies and initiatory traditions of ancient Egypt into a body of literature that became known as the Hermetic literature. The Hermetic literature is an amalgam of ancient Egyptian and Greek thought that was written down in the final stages of the Egyptian Empire. It is a retention, a time capsule of the spiritual and initiatory ideas of ancient Egypt. Being in Egypt, you can feel the energy and the portent behind some of the monuments and symbols in which the Ancients encrypted their philosophy. In 1908, there appeared an occult book called The Kabbalah, authored by three initiates. It was actually written by a Chicago-based lawyer and new thought author named William Walker Atkinson, and it was a brilliant distillation in seven principles of some of the core ideas that ran throughout Egyptian hermeticism. These seven principles explore how your mind is a mirror of the surrounding cosmos and how your mind is a tool of creation within the physical.

sphere that we occupy. The Cabala describes the source of creation as the All. The author argues that the All must be infinite, must be indivisible, must be something to which nothing can be added or nothing can be removed. The one thing, the one substance that meets that definition, is mind itself. All of the practices and the modalities of the modern occult, channeling, mediumship, astrology, past life regression, can be related back to the Cabala, which is a lot like what it claims to be a master key to the Mysteries. The ancient hermeticists believed that all of creation emanated from a higher mind that they called Nous. We relate to this mind; we are a reflection of this higher mind, and in our own sphere, we can create as this greater mind creates on a cosmic scale. The principle of mentalism teaches you to appreciate your mind in a larger dimension. It's not just a tool of motor skills and cognition; it's a tool of causation. We may not fully understand all of the laws and forces at work, but

your mind is one tool that you possess to actually create concrete experiences. If we understand the principle of mentalism, we understand that the mind is not just a phenomenon of the brain, but the mind also has a non-local existence. And when we understand that, we understand how we're able to glean information in ways that surpass ordinary sensory experience. This is what is studied in the field of psychical research and what is practiced by individual medium channelers and remote viewers. We humans don't all come from the same Source; we come from different dimensions, different experiences, and we have different purposes to be here. And mine is to give and receive information, but it's for somewhere else. I belong to somewhere else, I suppose, because I've been aware since I was very, very, very small. I can tap into something else, something beyond this here me now. It's a knowledge well beyond myself. I was living in Chelsea, the real one in England, and there was a young lady there who was sharing an apartment with several people. And there

was one young girl there, and she was addicted to reading, and everybody else was out. And she came up and said, Was I free? I said, Well, we're not doing anything. Went down into the living room, and she had letters of the alphabet on bits of paper with a glass in front. So, I'd never seen such a thing. So, she said, Well, you put your finger on it, and it speaks to you. I thought she did have a drinking problem. I thought, It's a bit early to have started, but okay. And she said to me, Well, you ask. I was feeling incredibly foolish. I said, Is anybody there? Thinking, and the name came up, Clive. Now, I knew somebody called Clive had been killed in a plane crash not so long before, but I thought I might have mentioned it. I thought, Well, I've had enough of this, so I'm going to ask for his wife's name. And I wasn't pushing this thing, and it spelled Penelope. And all I can tell you is there was a sense of warmth, elation, and we

were on this all afternoon, and she said, You've got the gift. You've got the gift. I didn't really understand what it meant. I was obviously directed into this because I was already fully fledged. I didn't realize I was getting on with regular life. Inus Swan was, if I'm trying to describe him to somebody who knows nothing about the field, he's the Leonardo da Vinci of the field, a one-off, I mean a Titan in his field. He actually coined the phrase remote viewing. He was one of the people who was hired by the CIA to remote view very successfully, and I spent a lot of time with him. One day he said something like, Do you want to go to the moon or some such, whatever. So sitting by the table, I said, Okay, fine, and I got there instantly, just Moon, I'm in the moon. I think he asked if I could see some sort of door or opening, and I could. I saw it. It was hollow, but there were staircases and rings around and

There were a lot of beings rushing around. I can't say what they looked like, but they weren't humans. And then there was a feeling of hostility, and he said, I think you better come out of there. And come out of there I did. Whatever it is I can do, I can do instantly and immediately. I don't know. I really don't know. Uh, what I do know is there's something different about me. So does the other exist swirling around? Obviously, it does. Well, obviously to me, it does. Am I closer to it, more in touch with it, more able to access it than some other people? Yeah, obviously. But is it around everybody? Yes. In my philosophy, I me don't know anything, but I can hear, for want of a better word, them. Earth has to be important to other intelligences. Why is it important? That's beyond my scope. I really couldn't say, but it is important. Important that information is given here, but is also sent back. The mysteries of the universe, I can't even begin to comprehend. But who

can I think it's just so far beyond our our Canen our knowledge. I think we, and I mean we humans, regular people, need to think of reality because as something solid, something you can rely upon, because that's more comfortable to me. It's a Poss the illusion [Music] [Music] when the Ancients looked up at the stars. They didn't see a difference between themselves and the cosmos. They saw themselves as an extension and in the same way that we are reflections of the great higher mind. So can we create within our own sphere of existence. This possibility animated the ancient Alchemists. This continued into the medieval period. And it continues today. Alchemists believe that we are capable of transforming matter in so far as we are part of the origin of matter. We see this when we're able to codify principles that repeat throughout the natural world, such as the golden mean or various ratios and formulas that can be used to demonstrate symmetry between natural objects. Once we unlock these

codes and possibilities within natural objects. It raises the possibility that we can repeat these things within our own framework of existence. I've been doing research with Alchemy since a very early age, going to sleep at night. What really freaked me out was where I went that night and then as a kid. I was frightening as hell. This whole idea of where you went that night of death was like big on my agenda. The thing with Alchemy is the idea that its basic theory of creation is the same throughout the [Music] Universe. The same kind of way the universe was created is the same way any small individual Act of Creation occurs as well as above, so below. As below, so above. Alchemy explores this creation and then tries to replicate it on a very small level. And so the purpose of this right of understanding these correspondences, what you would be, what you would do with it next on a very fundamental basic level, it gives you a certain control over the material world. I mean, the most immediate one that

this is used for is uh the making of talismans. A Talisman is a made object that is a focal point for an intent. It's a kind of magical object to get something you want. Essentially, what you're trying to do is to marshal kind of the energies of the universe to come together to a particular end. And the Very Old materials, it was you know causing someone to fall in love with you, causing your enemies to fail. And so once you have this object, it becomes unbelievably potent. If you do this enough times and you actually work like this uh sooner or later, you're going to be making one in your dreams. The next step is to follow that where that goes because it's not going to be where you think it is. When Alchemy is in its completion, meaning that it's both an inner and an outer practice, what it's concerned with is traditionally and classically is What's called the ascent of the Soul, right? The ascent of the soul to Union with the

one. Let me give you a really concrete example of this in something that's really ordinary. Geometry starts as maybe surveying, right? A measurement of Earth, concretely triangle, rectangle, squares. It's very easy to translate that into a more subtle practice, right? Which is paper and pen, compass, straight edge. So when you do enough of this on paper, after a point, you can start imagining it in your head. Once you can start imagining this in your head, you are far more flexible. You can start doing far more creative things spontaneously and anywhere you need to be. My approach to it was coming out of this early book, seeing the Arab Alchemist, seeing the early European Alchemist. So what was being talked of was actual physical procedures using these images in a way to describe it that fascinated me. I felt there was something else in between that science wasn't getting and the arts weren't getting. And then I tried to start to do the experiments. So here's one of my experiments dealing with astral projection, or actually what I was more doing, shape-shifting. It was like this.

idea of you know kind of dissolve, and this is alchemical dissolving into something, and then reimagining myself, reconfiguring into something, and then traveling around the house at night and seeing what was there. And I would do it lying on the bed straight, just comfortably relaxed. I'd confuse my right arm with my left, my left with the right, and then before you know it, everything would just sort of dissolve into this column. And all I wanted to do was picture myself as a snake there, right? And I did, and I thought, Let's take a cruise around the house. So I come off the bed, it's about 2:00 in the morning or so, so I'm just kind of going through the room, and then all of a sudden, I hear this blood-curdling scream. I am back in my bed, my heart is pounding, I'm like, you know, scared shitless, right? So, next morning, I'm having breakfast, my father's there, he's having breakfast, one of my sisters comes down, and my father goes

what God's name was that about, and my sister goes, I had this dream. I sat up, and there was this huge snake coming through the room, and I screamed, and then it went away. And I'm like, Okay, I resist a lot of explanations because sometimes I feel they're too soon, too easy, and too early. This is actually something that's very important in all chemical research of stop making sense. We can't help it. We just, anytime you look at anything, you're making sense of it, and to sometimes be uncomfortable with something being unresolved because sometimes resolving it too soon, you're no longer looking at it, and that means you think you know it, and actually, you don't. And this is the weird-ass thing with Alchemy. It's in those in-between things where it kind of comes together. Principle three of the cabalan teaches us that all things are in vibration and that through the nature of your thoughts, you can actually raise or lower your own vibratory frequency to perceive things that exist in other dimensions or other

Realms of being. This might seem like just a metaphor, but in the 21st century, we're learning to understand it very possibly as fact. String Theory teaches that there exist these strings that pass through other dimensions, including our own, on which particles, universes, and all things that exist occur on a kind of frequency that travels in and out of the world that we see and worlds that we cannot see. This raises the prospect that through altering the frequency of your mental state, you can perceive different states of being, including those that exist after bodily death. As a medium receiving people from the other side, it's a way of changing your vibration as the medium and sort of bringing it up, and then they sort of drop theirs down. So, they drop it down, we bring it up, meet in the middle, and find ourselves able to communicate. You're married, right? Yes. Is your mother-in-law passed? Mhm. Was she a little older? I'm Lauren Tibido, and I have been a working medium for I'm

embarrass to say like 30 years now as a medium in my very early developing days. I didn't have guides or teachers in the human form to help me. I would find myself sort of talking to lights and energies. I remember one group called itself the blue lights. The way they could convey a concept to me, I was sort of astounded at the philosophy of it, the wisdom of it, very aware that way beyond anything I could ever dream up or think up. Consciousness exists before human form and after human form. We can access it sort of Looking Backward, you know, or out into the future. So, it's just a thread that connects us through all different times and places. It's our own individual, I guess, Drop in the Ocean, but it's part of the ocean [Music] too. One of my favorite mediumship moments was a family that came to see me, three generations of the same family, all women, lively loud bunch. The grandmother was in her 80s, and we sat down. They started the session, and the first thing

that came to me was this man who says, I was her first husband. I'm Mory, and all the women start yelling and arguing. There's no Mory. There was only one husband. There was only hoe. And I sat there thinking, Did I really get it that far off? And then the lady next to me in her 80s just put her hands on her cane and she said, Well girls, I have something to tell you. She'd been married and divorced within a year in her late teens and had never told the family that there was a first husband. She was raised religiously, but would you say she was kind of of two minds about the Catholic faith? Have had NE death experiences? I was accidentally electrocuted when I was four. And a lot of research and study, including my own dissertation actually on NE experiences, will show that many, many, many mediums and many psychics as well sort of having walked close to the edge of human existence helps them with the movement and flow of changing from Human to Universal Consciousness and back. So it's walking

close to the edge of death, I think, makes this ability and acceptance of this ability much easier for people in mediumship. I find that the world around us, the larger vastness, can be drawn into the kind of the container of the self. It allows you in those moments to hold both the essence of yourself but also broaden it to include all that is but in the human form. I think we tend to forget we are part of a larger vaster one that is all that is consciousness. And so what a medium is doing is deliberately choosing to access that. And then when you're done, the wise course is to close it down, you know, allow yourself to be yourself again. You spend too much time outside the body, you begin to wonder what's the point of being human. I feel like I'm back almost in a child's bedroom. They're showing me with a under the bed a box of, you know, kids stuff. I had a client one time. It was a very sad situation. They had a daughter who was born with a

heart condition, and she needed several surgeries. She died at about 15 months old. In the reading, I tuned into this little girl's energy. She wasn't able to speak at that age, so she could only show me pictures from her life. She showed me a day at the beach. I can still see that little girl, you know, sitting on the beach behind the little sun umbrella with her, you know, oxygen and all the stuff she had to deal with medically. And, uh, yeah, there are days mediums cry too. I've never found mediumship to be mournful or sad. When I'm overwhelmed by emotion, it's usually for some powerful reason, like a little girl showing me her one day at the beach, things like that. If there's ever a day that I don't feel compassion for the people there and here, um, that's the day I stop working as a medium because it's really important to me to... This is the whole point of it, that it should be healing, it should touch your heart and your

emotions. Um, I don't think anybody who works with people can be so closed off. They don't feel for them. If they do, you know, maybe they've been doing it too long, and they have what's called burnout. It's an absolute delight to be able to do this work, even with the hard parts. For [Music] [Music] [Music] polarity is the most practical psychological principle in the cabala. It teaches very simply that you can transform one emotional state into another, provided you can identify its opposite. The easiest example is transforming fear into courage. They are both, in essence, the same thing. They're just at opposite ends of a sliding scale, and you can transform one state into another by concentrating on its opposite. The very mental act of focusing on courage when you're in a state of fear will cause this sliding scale to move in the direction of the desired polarity. An understanding of the law of polarity teaches you that you can, through an act of mental will, actually shift and

transform your own moods. The ancient Egyptians understood Life as a polarity. As Above, So Below. All things are paired with their own opposites. This is true throughout Natural Life: higher, lower, Darkness, light, static, vibratory, and even life and death. One of the fundamental distinctions of our existence is the distinction between life and death, and my thinking on this is that that is bogus. Among the many um factors that influenced the development of Western thought through the Greek philosophers was the whole notion of opposites. A man named Anacreon made a uh startling observation. I think this was roughly say 600 BCE, and he observes that isn't it fascinating that things that touch on human human life come in opposite pairs. There is up and down, there's hot and cold, there's wet and dry, there's male and female, and that notion of oppos opposites was one of the foundational Notions of Western thought. Then we carry it forward, and Aristotle just made that true-false distinction, which is a basic opposite. That's the basis of our way of thinking.

thanks to Aristotle that he put it in terms of those par sharp Polar Opposites of true and false. The big slip he made in my mind was that he didn't realize that in addition to the true and the false, there is a third possibility, and that is the unintelligible. I think that's a good illustration of the whole thing about opposites that sometimes when you get too AIX to an opposite pair, you don't realize that there might be things that are outside of the range of that opposite pair totally. I had a wonderful friend years ago, and she passed away in 1994. And then just a few months back, I was in Spain, and I was sitting at a table in a room all by myself preparing my notes for my upcoming lecture. And then I heard this disturbance off to the right, and somebody was coming into the room. But I was forced to look up when she just sat right across the table. And I looked into the eyes of my friend, and I know that

sounds psychotic, folks, but you know, hey, she said the actual. There is not a clear line between life and death. This was not exactly in words, or not at least in Audible, and the concept that came across. She said it's a matter of discontinuous boundaries, and it's kind of like when you see those eerie drawings. If you look closely at that and kind of think about it, there aren't definite boundaries. The boundary is not really there. But I know that the medical community is getting in this, uh, into this now. That I think they call it a third state that is neither life nor death. Let's say, for example, that um, somebody has an aneurysm, which occasionally happens, where you it can't be operated on without killing the person, and so because of the blood pressure. So what they do in certain circumstances is that they put these people into a state of hypothermia. They cool their bodies down very far, and then they drain all of the blood out of their head. Obviously, they've stopped the heart.

and there's no EEG tracings or anything. Now, during that operation, was that person alive or dead? I give up. The relationship between mythology and the near-death experiences is really quite fascinating because we can presume, I think, that people have always had such experiences. I remember reading about that at age 18 and Herodotus, whom I greatly respected, and I had a sense of disappointment in Herodotus that, well, I know this can't be, that there could be a place where you could go where you could call up your dead relatives. In 1988, I read that a Greek archaeologist had rediscovered the most famous of these Oracles of the Dead. What the archaeologist found was this big bronze cauldron in a subterranean chamber. Down there, they found carbon marks on the wall showing it had been lit by torchlight. In 1989 or 1990, I set it up and I invited a bunch of my graduate students over one-on-one. I just chose somebody who

died that you want to see again. I would take them through a grief counseling procedure, and then they would go into this mirror chamber in the dark position. So when they look up into the mirror, they don't see their own reflection. And to my utter astonishment, it works. People have very vivid, lifelike apparitions of their departed loved ones, which they interpret to be a real event. You know, is it real or not? Who knows, but they interpret it to be a real event. You know, many of these things that seem so wacky in the ancient textbooks, once that you look at them in a more reflective context, you can see that, Oh yeah, this worked. If you look at hundreds and hundreds of near-death experiences, you see a pattern. Basically, what people tell us, the most common things they say, that they hear the doctor say something like, Oh my God, he's dead, or We've lost her, or words to that effect. They leave their physical bodies, and they rise up. People say they see the

their physical body down below on the operating room table or whatever. So they say that, uh, although they can understand what the doctors and nurses and others are saying, that nobody can see them, nobody can hear them. But the way they try to explain it is they say, like, I passed through a passageway, like a tunnel, and I came out on the other side into this really brilliant light. It's like very warm and comforting, and this pervasive love and peace. And in that state, they say that relatives or friends of theirs appear, not in a physical form. And although there's no time, people have to relate it as though it is a sequence. And this panorama emerges of everything they've ever done. It's, they see it all at once. It's a review of the life, and you see the same action from the point of view of the other characters. It's like a learning experience, but they put a personality on this light, a being of complete compassion and love, and they say to, there are no words, but it's as though

this being asked a question, which is something like how have you learned to love. Some people say they have no idea how they got back, that they uh just suddenly were from the light, they were there in their bodies in the hospital with no sense of transition. Other people say that some figure, like a deceased relative or this being of light, says you got to go back, you got things left to complete. Some say that uh they were given a choice, that they were told they could either uh go back to the life they were leading or stay in the light. And not surprisingly, all the ones I've talked to chose to go back, right? But what's striking about this, it's always the same reason they say. For me, I would rather have stayed in the light, but I chose to come back. And the reason most commonly is kids, have kids left to raise. It doesn't impress me any evidence of Hell or anything like that because on prior grounds to me, the notion of a hell is it may give some fundamentalist people a pleasant experience to

contemplate their the of us burning in hell and what it is is just spiteful mean people you know it's like that's all it is it's at 74 I can be blunt principle five of the cabalan is rhythm. Rhythm is closely related to polarity. It tells us that this sliding scale of life is actually occurring naturally everywhere and all the time. It appears in all of life's natural processes: day following night, spring following winter, and it goes on within your own life as well. Every difficulty that you face, every suffering that you experience, is compensated for by a rhythmic swing in which you either receive something, learn something, or gain something, some great or unique possibility that arises from suffering. The principle of Rhythm reveals to us that there is a precedent to everything that we experience in life, including the lives that we see and that we occupy right now, and possibly other incarnations in earlier lives. The cabalan teaches that events and experiences that you're undergoing in the here and now could be rhyth Mally.

connected to events and experiences from previous lives or incarnations. This rhythmic swing occurs not just in the present but in all dimensions of your life and being. With eyes closed, we'll both begin with a deep cleansing breath. Well, the nature of Rhythm in hypnosis and regression therapy and the rhythm of nature starts fundamentally in primally in the way that a hypnotherapist offers their voice and their guidance to the group that they're working with. You know, if we look at the rhythm of one's past lifetime, a sequence of cause and effect and Rhythm and narrative impacting itself over and over again in a kind of feedback loop, the rhythm of things is constant. The more we can step out of our Rhythm and change it, you know, become the Maestro, the conductor, the better, of course, the more that we can take the reins of our music, guide it. So my first question is usually how can I help you? There doesn't necessarily need to be an answer to that question. The word hypnosis comes from the etymology of

hypnos and nosis Greek terms sleeping knowledge. Hypnos is sleep, and nosis is broadly knowledge. In both ancient Greece and ancient Egypt, there are documented places that were, I believe, called Sleep Chambers, but that also had other rooms where, you know, prototypes for what we now consider past life regressions and guided meditations and these kinds of Wellness experiences, you know, were very much the early versions of. There are many, many historical antecedents for these experiences that begin before the industrialized age. The first past life regression that I was guided through in a group by my dad took place, to the best of my memory, in the back of some new age bookstore somewhere around Princeton, New Jersey, and was a succession of transes, which is called INF fractionation, actually in hypnosis, where you will do many different transes, each one deeper than the next. This dayong experience, I think I was in and out of trance three or four times. In the past life regression that I do remember very well, I went into an

experience as a young woman about 21 to 23 years old who was a new bride married to an older man who seemed almost like a caricature Monopoly man kind of idea of a wealthy banker or somebody who had tremendously more power than I did financially and otherwise at the time. And I was left high and dry. This guy left me on the Great Plains during expansion into the West, and I think he took our kids, five of our children. And I saw myself a few years later. I remember the scene in my mind. I was dissociated from it for whatever reason, seeing her from the back just collapse and die while she's doing dishes. And in that narrative, I don't remember exactly what my father said at any given time, but I was instructed to, guided to extrapolate from that story an understanding of my brother and I's relationship at the time. He was three or four years older than I was, and we were experiencing a kind of sibling Jihad at home that was just

horrible between us, both of us at particularly volatile ages, and the relationship of power and control between the husband and the wife, the older man with all the money, and this younger woman who died doing dishes, and the relationship between power and control that was taking place at home in my family at the time while my parents were separating, while my brother was [ __ ] around and getting arrested for possession of LSD and pot in the suburbs of New Jersey. There was this story and this understanding around power and control that was highly instructive and useful to me as a young man, and that was the first time I was taught how to take a lesson from a past life regression too. It is about breaking the old rhythm of what the old order might have been. I will listen for how they are telling me their old order, their old rhythm was constructed, and we'll go about the business of rising above it. You could look at this as dissociation too, zooming out, you know, to be able to see, Oh.

there's the process, and we can dismantle it, break it apart, put it back together in a way that feels better, etc., etc. It was a couple of years ago with a young woman who was coming to me because she felt she was a workaholic, and she felt she needed to take better care of herself and wanted to come in and do some sessions. We did some present-based hypnotherapy and also some past-life regression, and I think it was the third or fourth session when we were doing a past-life regression when she went into an experience as a camel. This in itself is not so strange; non-human experiences during past-life regression are relatively common and usually quite cool and refreshing. But this particular camel was the camel present at the birth of Christ, and what she was offered at that moment was that she had mistaken nearness to spirituality for self-care for a long time. The camel present at the birth of Christ, so this extraordinarily elegant reminder to not mistake just nearness or proximity to a thing for the experience.

itself moment count one. When I reach one, I'll ask you to step through this door and find yourself in the next past lifetime memory that we'll see today. I absolutely love the magical aspects of hypnosis. I am also very aware that everything that is now science usually began or at some point was science fiction or, you know, somehow took the shape of magic. So, I again zooming out as far as we can. I think it's also very important to carry with us what I think is a kind of blurring of that line, to tell you the truth, that yes, of course, it's magic, and yes, it is, of course, also science. And isn't it wonderful that it's both? As Above, So Below is so beautifully evidenced in every hypnosis session and perhaps any bit of inner work, as one goes into noticing how the external is reflected internally. If we want to create a certain state or environment internally, we must also focus externally, and the opposite is true as well. [Music]

principle number six is cause and effect. The law of cause and effect teaches us that nothing in life is strictly random or accidental. The law of cause and effect gives us insight into some of the findings that appear within the field of quantum mechanics. A subatomic particle exists everywhere at once in a state of superposition, in a state of infinity, until an observer takes a measurement, at which point the particle becomes localized to one place. It becomes measurable. It becomes actual. It becomes real. A law, in order to be a law, must be consistent, which begs the question of whether what is experienced in particle mechanics also occurs in all areas of life and how cause and effect, as enunciated in the Kabbalah, teaches us that your mind is an actual cause and concrete reality is the effect. We're seeing that in quantum theory. We're seeing that in hermetic philosophy. Cause and effect is the universal law of creation. Some people will use divinatory methods such as the I Ching or tarot to try

to gain access into these multiple dimensions of cause and effect. Cause and effect is not really a limitation; it's a Harmony. [Music] I basically, this is you, and this is you. I think the cause and effect idea is very linked to that linear way we perceive the world, that everything is literally A Wheel of Fortune. We have Agency on the direction that where that wheel goes and the speed it goes too, you know. The idea about the cause and effect is that there are very subtle, invisible causes that will have an effect. I think images have a power to change us and to heal us, to impact us, you know, mirroring possible life experience is important for people and can change them, can allow them to create that metamorphosis within them, you know. I hear something very strongly, and I will shift gears, and that, you know, by shifting gears, I will reorient my life, and that's where the real magic for me of the tarot is. The moment you decide to throw

something on a table. There is a secret intention of wanting some kind of um transformation in the case of the tarot. Uh, what's very surprising is that although uh people shuffle the cards um and put you know a great deal of randomness in those cards most of the time. Uh, when we turn the cards and we go over the meaning uh it just makes so much sense to them you know. And then when we pull them it weaves a story that um not only is truly personal but sometimes is exactly what that what they need to hear from all that that network of uh causes and effects you you know. It opens it puts some lights on one reality and sometimes that reality is um you know the one you want sometimes it's scary sometimes you don't want to face it but uh it gives you some kind of milestone to work around. When I get readings uh I record the readings I record the voice of the tarot reader and then when I uh re-listen to that reading maybe 2 3 4 months later it

will definitely take a different dimension, yeah. After, you know, a couple of months, you, uh, relisten to that message, and, uh, you hear it, you know, all the, like, some, all the other causes, you know, all those things that you didn't heard, that you didn't remember from that message, that actually kind of took part and were kind of, you know, kind of like, um, causing some subtle change in your behavior. When you start to work with a Tarot, it's like you really understand that you can have an agency on your life, but, um, that you can actually, um, get out of your own box, and, you know, like, you're just submissive to a lot of exterior factors, uh, but that by creating subtle changes within, you can actually transform, basically. Uh, as a Tarot reader, uh, you spend a lot of time, uh, studying the tradition, and then there is also all these things that are part of your life, those kind of, like, um, free association. For me, the tarot reading I'm giving to a person is like a ritual that, uh, we both do, where we excavate things that are, um

within the subconscious tarot addressed, uh, that same, uh, area in man which is the psyche. That's where, um, you know, it addressed that place where that allows us to dream and have visionary experiences, you know, and the images that are on the tarot are probably came, came from those, uh, visions that are universal, and so some of them really speaks intimately about that. Some of them are very dreamlike. What is a dream? It is, um, you know, images that come from the subconscious and emerges by, uh, putting those images in front of you. There is something that we can't quantify that speaks directly to the subconscious and potentially, at least in my case, and I think in the people that I'm trying to help, uh, heal them. It has, um, an impact that we can't measure, and seeing those images is like a secret formula of healing. For me, tarot is meaningful, um, because I like a game to be entertaining. You can't do it on your own, you know, like for me, it's important, um, to share an experience with.

other people when you play that game in know for for it to be meaningful uh it has to be a collective experience from the association of those cards from you know it's like the serialist game you know like you put two realities next to each other that nothing to do with each other and then from that space that limal space something is created and that's the thing about tarot it's like a it's a poetic game they express something that um words fail expressing I'm just you know a translator I think the idea behind um tarot is that um that there is a lot of uh uh sacred aromatic knowledge packed into those piece of paper and the card doesn't really um mean anything unless we play with them when I see the cards you know let's say in one line you know five cards in one line I see them like being part of um the same image like a painting they draw a completely new picture terrorism is a m um microcosm of something way bigger you know like

people say, Oh, uh, it's like a Cathedral of symbols. You have all the elements that make you, you know, human existence. They are, uh, symbolically interpreted through those cards. And so, you have all the different, um, you know, all the different life experiences interwoven in that game that allows for transformation. It's a, um, microcosm of, um, macroscopic reality of that life, you know, call it life, that whole thing that we're just fragments of. It contains everything. [Music] [Music] The seventh and final principle of the Kabbalah is gender. Gender, in this case, doesn't refer to sexual roles but rather to the framework of Creation in which there exists an active force, a passive force, and a reconciling result. On the level of your mind, for example, your conscious thoughts can be seen as an active force. Your subconscious or subliminal mind can be seen as a receiving or passive force. But this force is that which is capable of giving birth. The result, the reconciliation, is action, causation, reality itself. All things follow this

pattern of gender, including the celestial influences themselves at the moment you take your first breath. According to astrology, you are affected by the positioning of celestial objects. This forms a thumbprint of your character. In a sense, you could say that the position of the celestial objects represents an active force. Your receipt of this influence is a passive force, and your life is the result. Hermetic thinking demands that we think of gender as something outside of the body. Gender, the way that it's used in sort of a social or political way at this point, is not relevant in this particular scheme. Hermetic thinking uses the word gender to denote the mode of manifestation, right, the mode through which something comes into being. If you think about binary code, you can literally create anything from the combination of a one and a zero, right? You need a receptive and an active. What gender really is, is the interior flux that allows that kind of constant fertility to take form. So, it has everything to do with art, and it has everything to do with creation, and it

has everything to do with astrology because astrology is the study of how things come into being. I began using astrology very early in my hermetic practices, probably in about 2002, when I started practicing magic. At the time, I was using it mostly for what is called electional astrology, where you select auspicious planetary events in which to perform your magic. At the time, I wasn't very attracted to sort of horoscope astrology or natal astrology. I maybe felt it wasn't hermetic enough or something like that, but that's changed. I will look at an astrological chart, and I will use sort of my training or knowledge of certain timing techniques and certain philosophical and astrological ideas while I assess the chart. But really, when the other person shows up in the room, that all becomes secondary, right? Primary really is what are the immediate needs or concerns of this individual, like what are the struggles and the difficulties in navigation or the anxieties that

are um perhaps hindering in them in some way or or if that's not the case what are their Curiosities uh about themselves about their uh life path about their karma if you like and um and it becomes very much of a discourse yeah based on that person's individual uh needs concerns uh spiritual uh depth people want to work at you know various levels all the time you know sometimes people want to get real heavy and get really intense and other people just kind of want to know like what's going on you know if there are Celestial influences at play or Celestial influences with some kind of um analog right to the individual or to the society or to the globe or to the universe how do those things actually come into being Because from a uh from a purely astrological perspective they're merely probable They're merely theoretical Certain processes need to take place in order for them to materialize and in order for that to happen you need the solar impulse yeah the will to manifest in the first

place and then you need the lunar impulse, which is formative, which informs, which unites the abstract with the physical. And then you have the physical reality and what we see here in European art. Saturn is often considered, you know, sort of an old man, right, with kind of a, uh, a beard and a sickle and all this kind of stuff. But in cabala, yeah, there are four worlds, and in each world of the cabalistic scheme, Saturn has a different mode of expression. So actually, in the highest, uh, expression of Saturn in that scheme, it is the great mother. Mythological stereotypes are simply a convenience for denoting the, uh, gender of a given planet, right? That Mars, for example, Mars is the planet of, uh, you know, egoic assertion and aggression and violence and what have you. And of course, these things in popular consciousness have a masculine connotation. But then you look at the viic pantheon, for example, and you have Khali, right, with all these kind of like

severed heads and bloodshed and things like that, and that's very much Marshal. So, the significations of the planet do not necessarily need to be associated with a specific biological sex, as it were. I mean, Venus, right, that tends to be feminine because Venus is grace and beauty. Venus is beauty, and these are attributes that society has associated with the feminine identity, maybe, but that doesn't need to be the case, right? We all know all sorts of male-identifying individuals who possess these traits, right? So, again, arbitrary. And there are also genders, if you like, attributed to the different astrological signs, right? Because every air sign and fire sign would have the designation of being masculine because these are said to be the upward-moving or active elements, whereas the earth and water signs are said to be feminine. These are the receptive and formative. So, say you've got a planet like Venus, and then you put Venus in Aries, okay? So, that's

like a planet that is normally interpreted as feminine in a masculine sign. So, you've got all kinds of interplay there, and you've got all kinds of crossover, and there doesn't need to be a definitive gender association with either the zodiac sign or the planet. The word occult is actually something I'm not much of an activist about, but the word occult is maybe something I'd like to move away from because I think that the word occult implies hidden or somehow forbidden or somehow unavailable, right, to everyone. And I don't really think that that's the way that it is. I think that everybody is functioning magically, and everybody's functioning on some level of using what is magic or what is psychic or what is esoteric. So, I might almost prefer the word metaphysical. I know that's really broad, but that kind of more deals with the nature of reality, right, the nature of this universe that we find ourselves in, and its various mechanisms and

how it functions, and why does reality come into being the way that it does? Why do things kind of intervene and intertwine the way that they do? You know, ancient Egypt and other early civilizations had a deeper understanding of nature than we do today. They understood there being an intimate connection between the natural world and your psyche. As Above, So Below. Today, we have lost sight of this wholeness, this interconnectedness, but the cabalan is a work that brings this ancient psychology back to us today. And if you can work with and come to understand its principles and ideas, its applications and its practices, you'll come to ReDiscover yourself as you really are: infinite. [Music] [Music]

Unlocking the Secrets of Hermetic Philosophy | THE KYBALION | Documentary

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The universe is mental, with everything in constant motion and vibration, and all things having duality and opposites.

The Hermetic literature, an amalgamation of ancient Egyptian and Greek thought, explores the principles of mentalism and the mind's role in creation.

The author's personal experiences with mediumship and remote viewing highlight the non-local existence of the mind and its ability to tap into higher knowledge and dimensions.

The Unseen Forces of Alchemy and Transformation

The narrator experiences a sense of hostility from non-human beings and feels a unique connection to other intelligences.

They explore the concept of alchemy as a means of transforming matter and replicating the universe's creation on a smaller scale.

The practice of alchemy, through talismans and inner work, aims to give individuals control over the material world and ultimately leads to the ascent of the soul for union with the divine.

The Connection Between Vibration and Mediumship

The speaker's sister had a dream about a snake, prompting a discussion about the importance of unresolved situations in understanding.

The principle of vibration suggests that thoughts can alter one's frequency, potentially allowing perception of different states of being, including those after death.

The speaker, a medium for 30 years, shares experiences of connecting with energies and guiding others through the process of communication between different dimensions.

The Power of Polarity in Emotions and Life

Polarity is a key psychological principle that teaches the transformation of one emotional state into its opposite.

The ancient understanding of life as a polarity is reflected in various natural opposites, such as life and death.

The concept of discontinuous boundaries challenges the clear distinction between life and death, leading to the exploration of a third state that is neither.

Near-Death Experiences and the Principle of Rhythm

People who have near-death experiences often describe a journey through a tunnel to a warm, loving light, where they encounter deceased relatives and review their life from different perspectives.

Many report a being of light asking them about their ability to love and offering them a choice to return to their life or stay in the light.

The principle of rhythm, as taught by the cabala, suggests that life's experiences are interconnected and that suffering is compensated by unique opportunities for growth, both in the present and across different lifetimes.

The Power of Hypnosis and Past-Life Regression

The speaker reflects on their tumultuous upbringing, highlighting the power dynamics within their family and how it shaped their understanding of control.

They share a transformative experience with a client who, during a past-life regression, realized the importance of not mistaking proximity to spirituality for self-care.

The speaker emphasizes the interconnectedness of magic and science in hypnosis, as well as the universal law of cause and effect, which they believe plays a crucial role in personal transformation and healing.

Tarot reading offers a unique way to understand and change one's life by addressing subconscious influences and creating subtle internal shifts.

The images and symbols in tarot cards hold universal meanings, providing a poetic and collective experience that can lead to personal transformation.

The concept of gender in the Kabbalah is explored as a framework of creation, highlighting the active and passive forces that shape our reality, with astrology playing a key role in understanding these influences.

The Interplay of Astrology, Gender, and Metaphysics

Astrology addresses individual needs and concerns, with celestial influences playing a theoretical role in shaping reality.

The gender associations of planets and zodiac signs are arbitrary, with no definitive link to biological sex.

The speaker advocates for a shift away from the term "occult" to "metaphysical," emphasizing the interconnectedness of the natural world and human psyche.