SirPalomides

According to texts compiled much later than the events they describe. And with much evidence- archaeological and internal to the texts themselves- to paint a different picture. If so, it’s one shared by many eminent Jewish scholars of Kabbalah. “Found” there in the same way post-Nicene Trinitarianism is “found” in the New Testament… by reading it into the text. But Kabbalah actually arises much later and rests on plainly neo-Platonic metaphysical foundations. There it is again: “it says in this book you can’t do this so that’s not what they did.” It’s a circular argument. It might work for fellow sectarians but it rings hollow everywhere else. Jesus didn’t leave us any writings. If you want to talk about the accounts attributed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, we can do that but those are later than the Pauline writings.

Gmirkin is not saying the Pentateuch was a total fabrication. He explicitly states it would have incorporated many prior traditions. This priestly blessing would evidently be one of them.

Thanks for sharing this ZYD! This is actually blowing my mind. I had not heard of Gmirkin's work before and, if I had heard about it in passing, I would have assumed this theory was the work of a crank, but then I see that Routledge published him and his books seem to get receptive reviews in academic publications, even if not entirely in agreement, so there must be something to what he's saying. If he's even partially right then the hellenized character of Second Temple Judaism is a lot deeper than I suspected.

Then Judaism has never existed since no non-syncretic form of Judaism has ever existed, whether considering, e.g. its emergence from the polytheist Canaanite religious milieu, or the pervasive Platonism in the kabbalah. Are you going to argue that Judaism influenced by kabbalah is fake Judaism? Good luck with that! Even the reliance on the Torah is not a consistent feature- see the evidence from the polytheist Jewish community in Elephantine. What you present here is a sanitized, tidy, revisionist, sectarian account of religion, akin to the Wahhabis' presentation of their version as the true Islam, which can only work by ignoring (or literally demolishing) huge chunks of history. Again, one can't understand an ancient religious current by looking at a book- that's true today in the era of mass literacy, and it's even more so in times when the vast majority of people acquired and passed on religious (and other) knowledge orally. This is before even addressing the huge textual problems with the scriptures in question and the questions of of who compiled them and when, how they were edited, altered, etc. You won't find any of those terms in the New Testament. They had to be brought in because, in fact, it is impossible to get what we think of as Christianity from the scriptures alone. But if you want to see the Hellenic impact in the New Testament, let's look at the letters, the oldest material in the New Testament. There we find allegorical readings of the Hebrew scriptures (e.g. Galatians on Sarah and Hagar), echoing a method pioneered by the Stoics vis-a-vis Greek myths; we hear that the Mosaic law is "a copy and shadow of heavenly things"; we encounter a sharp contrast between "the flesh" and "the spirit"; speaking of the resurrection, Paul distinguishes the "psychic" body (soma psychikon) and the "spiritual" body (soma pnevmatikon). We also have to account for some key notions that, while not Hellenic, don't seem to have precedent in the Tanakh. We learn, for instance, that the Mosaic law was delivered not directly by God but by angels; that this world/age is ruled by a collection of wicked heavenly rulers ("archons"); that Christ descended from some higher realm to deliver us from these rulers with secret wisdom (these ideas are often presented as characteristic of the gnostics but they're right there in Paul). Which also goes to show how much of a moving target it is to define "real" Judaism.

"The book says we can't do it so it can't happen": this is not how religion works, this is not how culture works, especially when we're talking about something that develops over thousands of years. Judaism has never been just one thing. Yes. The whole series of Christological debates and conciliar dogmas of the first millennium is pretty much incomprehensible without knowledge of Plato and Aristotle. You're not going to find words like ousia, physis, hypostasis, etc in the Hebrew scriptures. My initial comment and recommendation was aimed at those interested in studying the history of Christian esotericism. Fundamentalists would likely not be interested.

So is Philo of Alexandria. He is also a Platonist. Clement, Origen, the Cappadocian Fathers, Pseudo-Dionysius, and Maximus the Confessor are not Jewish. Anyone who wants to tackle their thinking should know Platonism. Okay but 2nd Temple Judaism is a hellenized religion.

I would say it's more that people steeped in platonist tradition became Christians. I don't think you could say people like Clement, Origen, or Marius Victorinus (or their Jewish predecessor Philo) were copying a tradition foreign to them, that was the tradition they were educated in and by which they made sense of the world in general and their Christian faith. They were hellenes and Christians. In some cases it might even be argued that neoplatonists actually infiltrated the church- whoever wrote the Dionysian corpus, for instance, or Synesius, disciple of Hypatia, who was made bishop despite explicitly saying to Pope Theophilus, "You can make me bishop but don't expect me to actually believe all this stuff." As was pointed out earlier, "pagan" is just a pejorative with no real content. The sharp distinction between Christians and "pagans" served polemicists of both parties but with the passing of the ages and the subsiding of polemics, it's easy to see how Christianity emerged out of the "late antique" religious milieu where various Hellenic, semitic, Persian, etc. currents were all mixing together.

Christian esotericism is as old as Christianity itself. For some history I can't recommend the Secret History of Western Esotericism Podcast (shwep.net) highly enough. For Christian esotericism see the episodes on, for instance, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and the Cappadocian Fathers. As with almost all of western esotericism, some knowledge of Platonism is important.

ACAB includes archons

Not an expert but white Tara practice is associated with health. You could probably find the sadhana for this particular practice publicly available somewhere if not online. An empowerment might not even be needed (there are many tantric practices which are offered to the public nowadays without empowerment). My understanding of these public empowerments is that they’re more like blessings and not quite the same as the empowerment you would get as a committed disciple. Formally they are the same but if you really wanted to get the full benefit you would be expected to adhere to a guru/ lineage (via refuge ceremony), undergo the rigorous ngondro practices, and other pretty serious stuff.

The funny thing about ancient traditions is that they’re usually not that ancient; and when they are, they’ve been altered, remixed, and reinterpreted many times over the ages, even by people trying very hard to be “orthodox”. Maybe the biggest enemy of various spiritual scammers and gurus is an independent investigation of religious, philosophical, or esoteric history.

“No girls or goldware were harmed in the making of this empire.”

I'm beginning to think it's a bad idea to say "Buddhism teaches x about women" when Buddhism is so complex and diverse. That said, some very popular texts like the Lotus Sutra or the Infinite Life Sutra clearly work from a broadly held assumption that to become a Buddha, one must first be a man. That is not the same as saying "women can't become Buddhas"; it means that women can become Buddhas... by first becoming men, as seen with the case of the Lotus Sutra's dragon girl, or Amitabha's vow that women would be reborn in his Pure Land as men. My sense is that, like many philosophers through the ages, the authors of these texts saw their present social conditions as expressions of some eternal law; it wasn't so much that they hated women but they couldn't imagine a society where most women were not profoundly oppressed, so when they said to women, "You can be a man in the next life!" they really thought they were doing them a favor.

The murmuring guillotine feasts on the turning gate, me boys.

The occult properties of stones and minerals is a very old theme at least in western esotericism. I don’t know much about it or to what extent new age crystal theory descends from or ignores those ancient traditions. It does seem to me that the human and environmental cost behind such objects is relevant. The amount of suffering embedded in many everyday objects too is a pretty horrifying contemplation. As far as occult properties of various objects my thinking is somewhat akin to that of Proclus and other Neoplatonists who saw everything as manifesting from the overflowing plenitude of the One; by virtue of this everything bears a inseparable link to the One, and even the most despised objects can symbolize the highest currents. Proclus applied this thinking to Homer and other poets, finding profound realities symbolized is material that, on its surface, seemed absurd or unenlightened. Such hidden connections are the highest work of poetry or of a poetic mindset. I think it’s better than hunting for rare or expensive materials.

Jason Read’s book Thunder Magic was recently released. Jason Read is trained in the Maoshan school of Daoist magic and those who follow the I Ching and Occult Taoism group on Facebook will have seen his many fascinating posts on various magical practices. This book is quite short but packed with fascinating information and, if you have the time and discipline, a very clear step by step guide to the practice of Daoist thunder magic (雷法). Read asserts that thunder magic has become “rather staid and ineffective ritual curiosities in the hands of the orthodox schools” but has retained its power among Maoshan sorcerers- I wonder if orthodox Daoists would contest this claim. Anyway well worth a look if magic interests you at all.

Yeah, I too find it hard to square the amazing claims made about tantric or Zen practice with the behavior of its enlightened gurus. And the Catholic church could really take some notes from the twisted arguments used to excuse such stuff.

I respect his rigor here but I wonder if Bhikkhu Bodhi would use the same language today, particularly that suggesting the teaching in the Pali scriptures is the true Buddhism. This essay was written in 1998; we know that a few years later he came to live in Chinese-American Mahayana monasteries in an atmosphere of mutual respect, up to the present day.

I have no idea, but in my experience with oft-retranslated books (Laozi, Bible, etc). usually claims about a new translation blowing open some previously obscured quality of the text prove to be exaggerated, if not entirely empty. Moreover, when we are dealing with an ancient, influential text such as the DDJ, which has taken a life of its own in the hands of numerous scribes and interpreters, the way the text has been carried on and read throughout the ages is more important than trying to uncover the author's true intent, which is probably impossible anyway.

Haven't read it, but it looks like Hoff is certain that he has found the Real Meaning of the text, unlike all those other sillies, and moreover has seen fit to remove entire chapters. Based on that it sounds like another exercise in self-aggrandizement and marketing in the Tao Te Ching mini-industry.

I believe the earliest extant commentary on the DDJ is that by Hanfeizi, who indeed interpreted it as advocating his legalist approach to statecraft.

Visualization has been a major part of Daoist magic since, well, forever I guess. Sanskrit and even Buddhist stuff is pretty normal in Daoist practices, especially in the more folksy “heterodox” strands. I don’t believe Maoshan is classified as “red hat” but it seems they are in some respects closer to that spectrum than to Zhengyi, Quanzhen, etc.

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Jade maidens? Or is that more for alchemists?

Not a chapter but he begins with a list of do’s and don’ts for the duration of the training, foods to avoid, optimal times for practice etc. including abstinence from sex. The practice is supposed to extend for a minimum of 21 days and maximum of 50 (I think).