Mercury

[Brian]

Ernst's proclivity does not necessarily imply proficiency.

[Brian]

Of course, "Ernst Suchs" could be referring to activity rather than quality, too.

[Apech]

Of course, "Ernst Suchs" could be referring to activity rather than quality, too.

 

They'd make a good firm of lawyers Ernst, Ernst, Suchs and Fuchs.

 

(are we off topic yet?)

Edited January 20, 2016 by Apech

[Brian]

They'd make a good firm of lawyers Ernst, Ernst, Suchs and Fuchs.

 

(are we off topic yet?)

Not if we go back and insert the word "mercury" somewhere in each of our posts...

 

(Sorry, RT! I'm done now.)

 

[Zhongyongdaoist]

Such word games are very mercurial, so regrettably not off topic, if somewhat off color.

[Zhongyongdaoist]

Thank you, Donald. I appreciate that you take the time to pack so much information in your posts.

 

. . .

 

I am not asking you to enter into any great detail, but can you share why you cannot?

 

. . .

 

Interesting... I quoted from their materials in an old thread somewhere. There are some interesting ideas contained in CC Zain's writings.

 

Best,

UFA

 

Thank you UFA for an excellent discourse!

 

It is certainly worthy of an equally excellent response, but to extract and distill down to an essence the major reason for why I cannot enter into a longer discussion, it is time.

 

I had to boil down a lot to post what I did post and left it at a certain degree of abstraction because further elaboration would have required more time.  As it is the post was the result of hours of reflection which is not reflected in its length or breadth.  Even after posting I have continued to ask myself if there is anyway that I could come up with some good examples in a short enough space and a reasonable time and I will probably continue to spend time on the question, that may never be reflected in posts here.  A good example of this is the work of C. C. Zain, I remember your posts and prepared at the time a partial response, nothing negative by the way, but I simply did not have time to polish it up to the sheen that I like and thus it remained and remains nothing but a few kilobytes on one of my hard drives.

 

That has been the fate of many things that I have thought to post on the Dao Bums, around 90% of things that I have thought of posting here remain in an unfinished state and remain much more than a few kilobytes on my hard drive, and they represent hundreds if not thousands of free man-hours of thought given to the Dao Bums that are not reflected in my posts here, which after slightly over seven years are finally inching up to a thousand, and certainly are not reflected in my cash flow, which constrains me to put in time to other more remunerative pursuits.  I would just as soon write, but it is the wrong thing to do at this time.

 

Well enough time spent on this lament.

 

(See guys word games.)

[FraterUFA]

That has been the fate of many things that I have thought to post on the Dao Bums, around 90% of things that I have thought of posting here remain in an unfinished state and remain much more than a few kilobytes on my hard drive, and they represent hundreds if not thousands of free man-hours of thought given to the Dao Bums that are not reflected in my posts here, which after slightly over seven years are finally inching up to a thousand, and certainly are not reflected in my cash flow, which constrains me to put in time to other more remunerative pursuits.  I would just as soon write, but it is the wrong thing to do at this time.

 

Well enough time spent on this lament.

 

(See guys word games.)

 

Though our situations are different, I understand completely.

 

Aside from time constraints, I know the feeling of shouting into the void. I do not post for obvious reasons... not to write a book and certainly not for internet fame (edit: I am not implying that this is your motivation either). I believe that wisdom cannot be codified in a book, but is rather a transmission that takes place from one locus of consciousness to another in accordance of the readiness to receive. It is for this reason that I delete most of my old writing.

 

I do learn a lot from your posts, please keep them coming as time permits.

 

Best,

UFA

[Zhongyongdaoist]

Though our situations are different, I understand completely.

 

Thanks UFA, I appreciate your understanding and the similar understanding of others.

 

I also want to quote this:

 

Mercury is the animating force of nature, within which can be found all possibility, all that ever was, is or will be. Within it is contained every possible human experience. For instance, every word, sentence or paragraph that I type, or will ever type, can be shown to be found in potentia within the "Mercury of English letters" (and this is something that can be readily demonstrated). That this Mercury contains not only truth, but also every possible lie, is a fact that is overlooked by most occultists and this oversight leads to countless errors, illusions and fantasies... but I digress.

 

An analogous type of potentia is found in numbers. There is an indeterminate numerological Mercury which can be thought of as the principle of counting. Then there is the somewhat determined Mercury which consists in the numbers themselves. Finally, that Mercury congeals into the fully determined form of a particular magic square.

 

So in classic alchemical thought, Mercury is not an intermediary or uniting principle, it is the principle of life (eg: potentia). Without sulphur and salt (energy and form), it cannot manifest in physical space-time. Without mercury, the chemical structures and physical forms of life remain inanimate shells, incapable of manifesting the recognizable signs of life and subject only to decay. The alchemist begins with the form and works his way up the rungs of the ladder of life, slowly developing an understanding of the universal Mercury (along with concrete demonstrations of that understanding, though that is incidental IMO) and as his understanding unfolds, he comes closer and closer to the apprehension of "God".

 

which I consider to be worthy of much reflection, another very mercurial activity, and reproduction, again since mercury is the “seed” or "sperm" of things, also very mercurial, lest it suffer this fate:

 

It is for this reason that I delete most of my old writing.

 

and be lost to us.

 

The only clarification which I would make is that it is absolutely essential to make a well formed distinction between the functions and meanings of the planet Mercury in astrology, with both the common metal mercury and mercury in the alchemical sense. Then these meanings can become a source of edification and not confusion. I will point out that another name for metallic mercury is quick (-ened) silver, that is living or animate silver and that silver is associated with the moon and that the teachings of the Qabalistic Alchemists, as found in the Aesch Mezeraph , attribute it to the Sephirah Yesod associated with the Moon and also with the Phallus of the Microprosopus.

 

I bore all of this in mind when trying to unify my thought about Qabalah, Alchemy and Astrology in my early twenties and in terms of the Cosmological function of the planet mercury as a manifestation of the Sephirah Hod, the best single word I came up with was "representation".  It is possible to take this one word and come up with almost all of the important ideas associated with Mercury as a planet.  For example, words are representations of things, and images, such as paintings, signs etc. can also be representations of things, but on the most profound level all of the world which we apprehend through sense can be viewed, literally as well as figuratively as “representations” of those things invisible and unformed which are the “archetypes” of things seen and heard.  I had this meaning in mind when I said:

 

Hod as the image of space / time 'enactments': A modern analogy would be that 'Hod is the computer that runs the holodeck'.

 

So there is my little nugget of the day for people to reflect on.

 

And now for a humorous observation:

 

I'm impressed (though not surprised) that you recognized where this came from. I learned the basics of magic squares when I was kid, but it wasn't until I studied higher math that I learned the trick of swapping columns and rows.

 

Summarized in this inversion, “funny, I learned about matrices as kid and magic squares as an adult.”   An observation more true than false since I learned about matrices in high school (still a kid by some standars) “Algebra 2” and pursued the subject with determination at the time (More wordplay guys, which if you're determined to fine out, go here.), and seriously pursued Magic Squares as an adult, doing some thinking about the "problem" of magic squares in my early twenties and more serious thought and investigation in my thirties. The false part is that I had an early acquaintance with both magic squares and magic squares from early readings in math and magic, including Donald in Mathmagic Land,  (Yes, it was available as comic, I probably did not see the cartoon until later.), and bought Aleister Crowley's Magick in Theory and Practice among other books on magic, when as young as twelve years old, when I was actually more of a “kid” kid then a teenager.

 

I will keep trying to refine the principle example which I am thinking about now, because not only could it be a good example of a modernized mathematical magic, but also demonstrate the usefulness of a well formed body of theory, such as that provided by Agrippa's Three Books of Occult Philosophy, and help to illustrate how one can use such a body of theory to investigate the morass of radionics and especially the theory and design of radionic boxes.

 

So much, and maybe too much, for now.

 

 

 

 

 

Edit: Corrected UFA in "Thanks UFA", it was YFA.

Edited January 20, 2016 by Zhongyongdaoist

[Brian]

Eigen see why you may have thought a hint was needed but...

 

[Zhongyongdaoist]

Eigen see why you may have thought a hint was needed but...

 

 

Well, I see your eigen and raise it an augen and now if we see eye to eye, eigen state if for a fact.

[Nungali]

It's mathematical magic my friends, magic squares that is, and neither Israel Regardie, nor the Golden Dawn knew much about either, though the originators of the Golden Dawn were perhaps more savvy in their own thinking and practice than their successors and 'tis a magic most Mercurial, dealing as it does in the formal properties of Systems and most appropriate to this thread.

 

Magic squares are a well formed set of mathematical objects called matrices and matrix mathematics is one of the most important mathematical studies because of its importance to Linear Algebra.  One of its most significant uses in the Twentieth Century was it application to Quantum Mechanics, where a some clever matrix mathematics turned out to be the equivalent of Schrodinger's Wave Equation and these two together tiled the floor of the Temple.

 

Now, just as a point of continuity here, I will note that the swapping of rows and columns is an important aspect of using matrices in mathematics, and in their application to solving systems of, for example, linear equations, aiding greatly in simplifying the problem.  Their application to magic is another matter, and rather complex and I cannot enter into any detail great detail, but such magic squares are used in Chinese, Indian, Arabic and Western magic.  I made a considerable study of them in the 1980s as part of a project of applying modern mathematics to magical practice which I first started pursuing in my teens in 1967 to 68.  Among other things that I discovered pursuing that larger project is that information theory can be constructively applied to maximizing the results of Divination and has suggestions for improving the technique of various types of divination.

 

My application of these ideas to Geomancy was very fruitful and demonstrate that criticisms made by Aleister Crowley are more a lack of his imagination then of Geomancy's potential.  I will note that the extensions which I made did not require information theory, and I started them before I started to use information theory, but it did require some insight into the logical structure of Geomany and how it called out for such extensions.

 

I wish I had more time talk about this, but it really could fill a couple of books, and even a cursory outline might be more a source of confusion than edification.

 

As a note astrological magic is one of the major applications of Mathematical Magic.  Astrological magic was largely neglected in the magical revival, but was considered essential in traditional magic.  Interestingly, I was first drawn to Astrological Magic because of my study of the "Church of Light", teachings again largely in the late Sixties.  Anyone interested in whatever happened to the "Hermetic Brotherhood of Light" (hint, hint Nungali, if you haven't realized this before.) could do worse than scratching around there and seeing what turns up.  Though from the perspective of post Golden Dawn English speaking magic it is widely off the mark, it is much more compatible with the Continental systems of Papus et. al., though unique in its outlook.

 

 

 

Edit: Added ". . . and most appropriate to this thread" to the first paragraph, a change which I had made, but there was a passing squall (get it? squall = sql error) that blew it off course.  The squall lasted only for a few minutes.

 

 

Interesting Donald !    Thanks .

 

I have encountered them in Vedic and Arabic culture, in amulets

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ALSO interesting that you got and got rid of that SQL error ... I am still plagued by it and cannot get to the index board ... it keeps popping up and blocking my navigation. 

[Apech]

ALSO interesting that you got and got rid of that SQL error ... I am still plagued by it and cannot get to the index board ... it keeps popping up and blocking my navigation. 

 

 

Have you cleared your browser cache?

[FraterUFA]

and be lost to us.

 

The only thing that can be lost are the useless mental labels and constructs which lead those who overly rely on them into error. Wisdom is functional, practical and acquired not through study, but through practice and experience. 

 

The only clarification which I would make is that it is absolutely essential to make a well formed distinction between the functions and meanings of the planet Mercury in astrology, with both the common metal mercury and mercury in the alchemical sense. Then these meanings can become a source of edification and not confusion. I will point out that another name for metallic mercury is quick (-ened) silver, that is living or animate silver and that silver is associated with the moon and that the teachings of the Qabalistic Alchemists, as found in the Aesch Mezeraph , attribute it to the Sephirah Yesod associated with the Moon and also with the Phallus of the Microprosopus.

 

The alchemists did not for the most part utilize Qabalah as far as I can tell. It was certainly more in use in Spain and France, as it was there that it was going through its early stages of modern development. Many of them however did rely on classic mythology for inspiration.

 

But even the writings of the alchemists aren't in agreement on these points. Luna was silver, and she was called Mercury by some. Apollo was Gold and our Sun, our hidden Sulphur and Salt, the son and bridegroom of Nature. The Hermaphodite child of the Sun and Moon was not a reference to the sephiroth, but of a physical product rarely seen on this earth (don't tell that to anyone whose been indoctrinated into the misguided belief that it is Kundalini though).

 

No amount of study will unravel that knot. It is all true, all perfectly descriptive though.

 

Best,

UFA

[rex]

This was a favorite diagram of mine for many years.

 

However, I'm going to point out something which is not obvious from a theoretical perspective but is proven immediately by practical work. The above diagram is inaccurate from a laboratory standpoint: Fire is not volatile, it is fixed. If you follow the implications of this, you will see that it means that Mercury cannot be the intermediary.

 

Best,

UFA

 

It's hardly suprising that it was a favourite of yours for so many years - it just seems to sum things up nicely, especially in terms of my limited experience of qigong, pranayama and spiritual alchemy, whereby energetic influences can be taken in through breath (air) and water, then through the blood (water) assimulated by the physical body (earth/Salt). In this sense Mercury appears to be a superlative intermediary and bridge to  enable the transfer of qualities from Suphur to Salt.

 

As the diagram is more of a top level overview for orientation it is clear that it cannot represent the nuances of laboratory work.

 

Your point that Mercury is not only an intermediary is well taken, though I welcome corrections/feedback/pointers from anyone on howlers in the opening paragraph.

 

All the best.

Edited January 21, 2016 by rex

[Brian]

Well, I see your eigen and raise it an augen and now if we see eye to eye, eigen state if for a fact.

How gneiss of you!

 

(You should see and feel the wall at the Mineral and Lapidary Museum, just down the road from me (literally about 25 miles from where I'm sitting as I type this...)

[RigdzinTrinley]

Not if we go back and insert the word "mercury" somewhere in each of our posts...

 

(Sorry, RT! I'm done now.)

 

[Zhongyongdaoist]

Some misguided member of the Dao Bums "Silent Majority" was kind enough to PM me allowing as how he thought I was such a clever fellow for my cursory comments on divination and information theory and other aspects of high mathematics as it might be applied to this weird spooky stuff and wanted to learn more.   Foolishly I said, "happy to oblige as long as I get your first born child for ghoulish experiments."  Well, bottom line, said person did not go for that deal, but after some haggling I did manage to get approval for the Idea of posting part of our exchange for the benefit of others as long as it did not betray his true identity, miffed but unbroken, I agreed and what is posted below is the first fruit of our discussion, which is mostly some references to other threads which people who have been following my wild ramblings will already be embarrassed enough to admit they have already read, but for those new to my posts they may prove useful:
 

In order to really understand what I mean here by Formal Properties of Systems:
 

It's mathematical magic my friends, magic squares that is, and neither Israel Regardie, nor the Golden Dawn knew much about either, though the originators of the Golden Dawn were perhaps more savvy in their own thinking and practice than their successors and 'tis a magic most Mercurial, dealing as it does in the formal properties of Systems and most appropriate to this thread. (Emphasis added, ZYD)

You have to understand that I am not talking about merely conceptual and logical properties, the verbal and numerical representations of the actual Formal System, but rather to Formal Causes in the sense of Aristotle and a review of this thread might be useful:

Agrippa and Aristotle the Aristotelian Background of the Occult Philosophy

I have humorously dealt with aspects of this here:

>>

Actually, strange as it may seem, magic is the proof of science.

I say this because in the well-formed definition of magic given by Agrippa in his Three Books on Occult Philosophy all of the positive content of modern science and engineering can be viewed as manifestations of Natural and Mathematical Magic. By positive I mean all those conclusions and doctrines of Science that have been the result of Scientific Method and not those derived from or derivable from the false world-view with which the Scientific Revolution started, the mechanistic/atomistic framework based on the Seventeenth Century revival of Epicurianism, and substantially refuted by both Special Relativity and Quantum Physics, viewed as a reductio ad absurdam proof of such mechanistic principles taken as starting points and a return to explanation in terms of Formal causes as Thomas Kuhn explores in 'Concepts of Cause in the Development of Physics', which can be found in a collection of his essays The Essential Tension, on p. 21.

From part of Kuhn's conclusion:
 

'What is to be concluded from this brief sketch? As a minimal summary I suggest the following. Though the narrow concept of cause was a vital part of the physics of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, its importance declined in the nineteenth and has almost vanished in the twentieth. ... the structure of physical explanation closely resembles that which Aristotle developed in analyzing formal causes. Effects are deduced from a few specified innate properties of the entities with which the explanation is concerned. The logical status of those properties and of the explanations deduced from them is the same as that of Aristotle's forms. Cause in physics has again become cause in the broader sense, that is, explanation.' (Emphasis is mine) (Kuhn, Thomas; The Essential Tension, p. 28)

Since Magic in Agippa's sense is fundamentally tied to a world-view based on Aristotle's forms, the interpretation of physics in terms of Aristotle's forms, puts them on the same level as Aprippa's explanation of magic, thus magic is the proof of science. QED. (Emphasis added, ZYD)

Thus, I see gravity and electromagnetism not merely as mathematical models of physical phenomena, but rather as Substantial Forms which manifest in all gravitational and electromagnetic phenomena and have received mathematical form as part of the explication of their properties. To put this in terms of astrology for example, both as divination and magic, Mercury is a Substantial Form that includes both the Form of Gravity and the Form of Electricity, but also consists of an "Information ordering" Form-al property and it is this "information ordering" form which is the object of Astrology and also by extension Astrological magic.

Part of the traditional framework is explained here:

Agrippa's Doctrine of Occult Virtues

Traditionally the "Information Ordering" properties of substances were referred to as "soul".

Keeping the above in mind will make what otherwise seems mere "talk" and "mental conceptualization" something of much greater significance.

Please bear in mind that even the reference to this person by the masculine pronoun "he" is not intended to confer any information about this person, but is just a convenience.  He has requested time to review the posts that I have linked above and some here may wish to do the same.  More as our correspondence progresses and yes, I am still busy and will have to stop this if it gets too demanding on my time, but I do like to keep the illusion that I really am generous with the fruit of my labors alive, in so far as possible.

 

 

 

 

 

Edit: I hate the way the editor here ignores my wishes and arbitrarily adds or subtracts line spacing as it sees fit.  I have a certain way that I want my posts to appear and I sometimes have to make adjustments, in the process one of the links at the top of a quote got seriously messed up in appearance, oddly enough it still worked, but I have tried to correct its appearance.  I hope that has worked, but if not ignore its deformed appearance and try it anyway.

 

Edit: I added "and wanted to learn more" in the first paragraph above, the above didn't quite make sense without it, not that it makes much  sense anyway.

Edited January 27, 2016 by Zhongyongdaoist

[Zhongyongdaoist]

I am sorry to be so long in posting more here, but both the correspondent I mentioned and myself have been rather busy and we have been talking about meta-issues related to scientific method applied to these esoteric matters and there has not been much of interest about Mathematical Magic and magic squares, however in the process I was reminded of this post which has some interesting things to say and shows at least one example from Chinese Astrology in which a whole system of Astrology is derived from the mathematics of the 3x3 magic square which is so fundamental to Chinese Esoteric Cosmology:

 

 

Following an adolescent interest in expanding the type of mathematics used in esotericism, which I was later to put under the general topic 'Mathematical Philosophy' following the categories of occult philosophy of Cornelius Agrippa, I did a lot of work with magic squares which I have characterized as 'sacred linear algebra' in the following post:

 

Since you specifically mentioned Daoist/Yi Jing, I am surprised no one mentioned The Astrology of I Ching translated by W. K. Chu and edited by W. A. Sherrill. This is a translation of the 河洛理書 (Hé Luò Lǐ Shū). Which title they rather clumsily translate as the "Ho Map Lo Map Rational Number Manuscript", and which might be better rendered as "A Treatise on the Inner Essence of the Hé Map and Luò Document". The keyword here being 理 (lǐ), translated as "inner essence", and often rendered as reason, thus Chu and Sherrill's “rational”, which in this case is slightly misleading because the numbers involved are just integers and not “rational numbers” at all.

Basically the “inner essence” of the he and luo is a natal Hexagram derived from the “Eight Pillars of Wisdom”, the combination of Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches ruling the year, month, day and hour of ones birth, for example Fire Dog, Earth Rat, Metal Rooster and Water Dragon. The technique is simple and I have found the results interesting.

Otherwise for Chinese astrology in general check out the works of Derek Walters.

Now for another one of my, I hope at least, fascinating digressions. Sometime ago I made the following post in a thread about the Lou Shu or “magic square of three”:

 

. . . the applicability of a formal system to life is seldom obvious and the magic square of 3 is a formal system. Among other things is has a formal analogy to the matrices used to solve linear equations, but I am sure that I am only pointing out the obvious to you. It is also unique among the families of 'magic squares' in being the only one with one member and if I recall correctly also being symmetrical in all transformations. Now symmetry is important, for example:

 

'Some of the most basic aspects of physics follow from looking at symmetries. The symmetry under translations in space implies the conservation of momentum, while symmetry under translation in time implies the conservation of energy. The relation between these conservation laws and the symmetry transformation is much more direct in quantum theory than it is is classical mechanics.' Peter Woit, Not Even Wrong, p. 36

and more interestingly:

 

'The SU(2) transformation properties of a particle have become known as a particle's spin. This term comes from the idea that one could think of a particle as a spinning particle, spinning on some axis and thus carrying some angular momentum. This idea is inherently inconsistent for a number of reasons. While the spin is a quantized version of the angular momentum, there is no well defined axis or speed of rotation. Spin is an inherently quantum-mechanical notion, one that fits in precisely with the representation theory of the symmetry group SU(2), but has no consistent interpretation terms of classical physics.' ibid. p. 46

In other words formal mathematical systems could be seen to determine such macro properties as why tops spin, and such necessary phenomena as the conservation of energy and motion. Particle spin even explains why we have 'matter' and 'energy'.

The magic square of 3 could be just such a formal mathematical system whose importance was discovered 2000 plus years ago and whose area of applicability happens to be to spiritual cultivation and a description of humanity's spiritual potential.

The applicability of such systems to life is determined by their 'fruitfulness' and generations of Daoist practice could be used as an argument that this system is very fruitful indeed.

I was replying to one of our members who is fond of asking questions, some very good and others, such as the ones he was asking in this case, not very edifying. The thread ended at this point and I have not had time to return to the topic until now, and the reason why I bring it up now is that, had I continued with the above thread, I would have cited this Yi Jing astrology as just such an example of the application of the formal system embodied in the he/luo diagrams. The technique of the astrology is hardly the type used to solve a set of linear equations, being simple arithmetic, but it does show that interesting and useful information lies in the most unexpected places and only waits for the right analytic system to bring it shining forth.

Occasionally there is talk on the Tao Bums about Sacred Geometry, Sacred Linear Algebra anyone?

Since you had relocate the thread which I reference in the above quote, I thought pulling this up would be useful and interesting as illustrating one application.

Most of my work would take us well outside the area of purely Daoist Magic and is highly technical anyway, but basically it is possible to create magic squares of just about any size and to represent just about any complex magical system on them.

Regarding uses within Daoist Magic, years ago I took the material in Saso and Lagerway (a less well known academic authority on Daoist ritual who covers much the same ground) and let my fingers do the walking, creating a basis for Daoist ritual in which one has 'the whole world', if not exactly in one's hand, at least on one's fingers. While I was reading some of Jerry Alan Johnson's material years later, I was amused to discover that this is a Maoshan Thunder Magic technique.

The above touches on several interesting aspects drawn from Chinese Tradition and the subsequent content of the thread, albeit short clarifies them to some extent and is worth a quick read.

 

[RigdzinTrinley]

Can't compute

 

I'll come back later I guess