The Only Conceptual Difference Between the Hermetic and the Current Scientific World View
Alchemy and chemistry are fundamentally the same field of study. And so are astrology and astronomy. They aren’t considered as such however because of a single assumption present in Hermeticism, an affirmation that explains the insistence of magic on correct time, materia, and voces magicae.
The assumption is that everything that exists in the world has an unnamed property which classifies it in relation to everything else in an increasingly complex manner as farther as you trace it from the One Thing. For the sake of explaining it, I’ll call this property “quality” for the rest of this article.
For instance, let’s trace the quality of Iron. Analyzing it from the point of view of the duality (very close to the One Thing), it is masculine. Its planetary quality is martial. On a natural level, it is mineral. Elementally speaking, it is cthonic.
This means that iron has the same quality as natural fire up until the elemental level, and only differs from the thorns of a poisonous plant on the natural level onward.
The property of quality is important to understand two notions of magic: Sympathy and rulership.
Magic is mostly animistic. Everything has a soul, and spells either try to command it or make a deal with it. In a sense, magic is a form of persuading parts of the universe in bending to one’s will (which sounds grandiose, but most of the time isn’t.) However, dealing with individual materia is inefficient and time consuming, thus the magician use the property of quality to facilitate the process.
Sympathy assumes that things that have the same quality attract each other and resonate each other’s movements. For instance, drinking a solar elixir attracts whatever has a solar quality to the magician, maybe bringing him/her fame, but also attracting birds and golden paraphernalia.
Because quality is present in everything, abstract or concrete, artificially increasing one’s quality can be perceived as “coloring” one’s life with it. This is the effect of sympathy.
Rulership affirms that souls of the same quality are hierarchically related to each other. Thus Johphiel, the spirit of Jupiter, can command what is jovial to do what he wants, but is commanded in turn by Sachiel, his ruling angel.
Lately, occultism has been moving towards a more grounded approach, maybe as a reaction to the New Age movement. The modern magician wants to know the origin of a concept and if it works objectively.
However, magic has a lot to incorporate if it wants to become modern and, certainly, more efficient. Many occultists of the 70’s tried to do exactly that, but their theories devolved into anti-scientific explanations of reality, as, for example, “quantum mysticism” and similar distortions. This happened mainly because they didn’t investigate both subjects enough, having only a superficial understanding of science and magic.
Mapping the differences between the two is the key to creating a bridge between the outdated methods and the current knowledge. Using the notion of quality is a tool for creating that bridge.
