Boris Martinov
Foundational Principles of Western Spirituality, Magic & Astrology
workshop cathedral
saturday 8/25 @ 2:00pm
Presenter bio
I study Western spirituality, philosophy and magic as a hobby. My focus is on Platonism, Hermeticism and pagan theurgy but I have a solid understanding of mostly all Western spiritual traditions. I base my studies on primary sources, academic commentaries and discussions with modern practitioners. I believe it's imperative to continuously check one's positions and guard against subjective bias especially in a field that abounds with misrepresentations. I'm not affiliated with any institutions and study for my own personal benefit. I don't proslytize and uphold the right of everyone to believe whatever they want, my goal is to hopefully bring some clarity to a complicated and misrepresented subject.
workshop description
How is it that the Western thought tradition proudly boats a reputation for rational discourse yet its spirituality as depicted today makes no sense? How did we arrive from old texts claiming that the blood of a white dove will bring you love to then just pray to Jesus and wait for a miracle? Why did the brightest ancient mathematicians spent their professional carrier casting astrological charts? We may think that ancient people just made it up out of ignorance but what if they were actually following an underlying logic.
Fortunately since the invention of writing the ancient Greeks documented their ideas about the world and from a few surviving fragments we can begin to reconstruct working theories of ancient Western beliefs. In this lecture I hope to give a coherent historic account of Western spirituality for the period from ancient Greece to the Renaissance. I will present the spiritual and philosophical foundations that inform how a Westerner understands the world and the theoretical mechanisms of how magic and astrology are supposed to work. I will cover the mystical and chthonic origins of Western spirituality from prehistory, ancient Greek philosophical currents, Hermetic philosophy of the Hellenistic period, the concept of the soul and heirarchy of spirits, the principal mechanisms of magic and astrology, Aristotelian science and epistemology, a quick overview of early Christianity and the causes for the reemergence of the occult in the Renaissance.
Ancient Westerners lived in a wonderous universe inhabited by spirits and Gods where miracles were commonplace. Yet through the inherited cultural heritage and remaining linguistic constructs their spiritual world is in many ways more relatable for us modern than that of Asian and American cultures. One can not hope to easily comprehend the contents of their own psyche from outside the environment which has shaped it.