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- Yes, I'm gonna talk a
bit about what I'm calling

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the Hermetic Jung.

Active imagination and the
journey through the planets.

And this means I'm
gonna be looking at a

central theme in
Hermetic philosophy,

hermetic tradition, and seeing

what connections we can make

between it and some
of Jung's ideas.

The idea that we can
make these connections

shouldn't seem strange
because Jung's work

itself, in a very
broad sense, you know,

falls under the
Hermetic tradition.

And both Jung's work and the
Hermetic tradition itself,

I would say, falls under this
category of eternal knowledge

that we're focusing
on this weekend.

In different ways they
both express in some form

some central themes
in what we can call

the perennial philosophy.

It's in a very,
very broad sense,

and the broadest sense
possible means that, you know,

we are not simply physical
beings, natural beings,

beings of time and space,

but there's a part of us,

and perhaps the most
important part that exists

in some realm beyond.

This is one of my
favorite pictures of Jung.

And I love the idea that
he has his glasses up there

on his forehead.

The one on the left side is
almost over his third eye.

I guess, so this is in a way,

I don't think Jung
did this on purpose,

but in a way it's a
kind of unconscious.

You could call it a
Jungean slip in a way

where he's giving us a
sign about looking within,

looking inside, you know,
metaphorically inside

our heads.

So Jung has his glasses
up there showing us

where we should be looking.

And the journey I'm
gonna be talking about,

even though it's the
journey through the planets,

is, in reality,
an inward journey.

It's a journey within.

It's a kind of journey that
Jung taught many of us to take.

I know when I first became
interested in this sort of thing

in my teens back in
the 1990s, excuse me,

back in the 1970s,

one of the first people
I was reading was Jung.

I didn't understand
much of it then,

I still don't understand
a great deal of it,

but Jung, like myself,
and many others I believe,

Jung was the one who
sort of showed us

how to look inward.

He certainly showed
modern man how to do that.

And the whole idea
of inner journeying

is part of the
esoteric tradition.

It's part of what we call
the Western Inner Tradition,

Western Hermetic Tradition.

In recent times
there's been a movement

in some Jungean circles
to sort of separate Jung

from this way of seeing
him as part of this

Western Inner tradition,

separate Jung from being
seen as an esotericist

or an occultist in some way,

emphasize his scientific side,

his more strictly
psychological side.

And I think that's
all to the good.

I think Jung's very
strict, rigorous,

more or less scientific
work needs to be recognized.

He was scientific
as Freud let's say.

But he also had this other side,

and I think to sort of try
and lose this other side,

this esoteric inner
occult side of side,

you get kind of a
Jung-lite in a way.

Something similar can be
said about Emanuel Swedenborg

who more or less I would say
is kind of the inspiration

for this conference
center here, Purley Chase.

It was started by
Swedenborgians.

It's maintained by them.

I've written a small
book on Swedenborg

and I've given talks at the
Swedenborg Society in London,

and quite a few
people come to them,

don't like the idea
of seeing Swedenborg

as an occultist in some way.

They don't like the idea
of seeing Swedenborg

as having something
to do with esotericism

in this sort of thing
'cause they believe

it takes away from his
religious significance

and all that.

And I can understand
that argument,

but once again I
think if you do that

you'd have a Swedenborg-lite

So we have Jung
looking into worlds.

And some of the inner worlds

that I'm gonna try to

introduce us to or
bring us to today

have to do with what we
call the Hermetic tradition.

What is the Hermetic tradition?

What is Hermeticism?

It's the body of knowledge,
body of philosophy,

insights and spiritual wisdom

associated with
Hermes Trismegistus.

It means
"thrice-greatest Hermes".

He's great, great, great.

He's great as a philosopher,
great as a sage,

great as a king, great as quite
a few other things as well.

And the story goes
that Hermes was

given a visionary experience
of the eternal mind

of what we can
call nous in Greek.

This kind of archetypal
mind at large

as Aldous Huxley referred to it,

not specifically
the Hermetic version

but in the general
sort of sense,

not in any particular mind
that my mind or your mind,

but the sort of creative
mind behind existence,

behind reality.

And the story is that Hermes,

in a very relaxed state,
or his body was quiet,

his senses were quiet.

He suddenly had this
vision of the eternal mind

coming to him.

And it was then that he
was given this revelation.

Hermes is believed to
have been given this

kind of revelation
about the true knowledge

of the relations between
man, God, and the cosmos.

And he is thought or was thought

to be the author of a
series of philosophical,

spiritual, inspirational,
and also magical tracks

that have been come to be known

as the Corpus Hermeticum,

the Hermetic body
of work basically.

We see him here as
an alchemical Hermes.

You have the sun and the moon.

One of the central
themes in Hermeticism

as well as in Jung is
this bringing together

of the opposites.

This unification of contraries

or holding in the
polarities in a kind of

creative sort of tension.

Here's another sort
of image of Hermes.

This is much more, this
is a much later one that

earlier one was, I forgot
exactly what century it's from,

16th to 17th century.

This is an illustration from

Manly P. Hall's classic work,

"The Secret Teachings
Of All Ages".

If you're not familiar
with it, you should be.

It's one of the great
compendiums of esoteric

and inner and Hermetic
and kabbalistic and

free masonic and so
and so knowledge.

This is an illustration by

someone named Augustus Knapp

who did the illustrations
in the book.

And we have Hermes here

and his guise as the Egyptian.

Now, throughout antiquity,

through the Dark
Ages, the Middle Ages,

and then especially
in the Renaissance,

Hermes was believed to have been

a contemporary of Moses,

or perhaps even older.

He was thought to have existed

at the dawn of time.

He was considered
to be a real person,

a real individual.

Subsequently in the
early 17th century

through humanistic,
scholarly research,

it was determined that the books

making up the Corpus Hermeticum

that had been lost
for about a millennium

from late antiquity until
they were rediscovered

by a book scout working
for Cosimo de' Medici,

the power broker of Florence.

For a long period of time for
a millennium, more or less,

these Hermetic books were lost.

A few bits of them
turned up here and there

in different places.

There were few scraps of them.

There was one book
called the Asclepius

which was known
during the Dark Ages

and it's in Middle Ages.

It's sort of a separate
text from the main

body of the Corpus Hermeticum.

But Hermes Trismegistus
was known during this time.

His name was still known.

It was an anti-conjure
with literally.

And when the Corpus Hermeticum

was rediscovered
in the Renaissance

and was translated
by Marsilio Ficino,

it had an immense impact
on the Renaissance.

The Renaissance
wouldn't have been

what it was without
this input from

Hermes Trismegistus.

And if you're interested
in following this line up

you can read a wonderful
book by Frances Yates,

Giordano Bruno and the
Hermetic Tradition,

where she traces the rediscovery
of the Hermetic texts

and their influence on the
Renaissance at the time.

As we know the Renaissance
was a time of rediscovery

of ancient works,
Greek philosophy.

Plato was another one
who was more or less

rediscovered during that time.

Ficino translated Plato as well.

But if we look at Hermes here,

the Egyptian, he obviously
has got the pharaoh's

sort of head cap.

He's holding the Emerald
Tablet in one hand.

This is the fabled Emerald
Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus

which is, I guess, the
central text in alchemy.

Although the Emerald
Tablet itself is not part

of the Corpus Hermeticum.

It was not part of these
texts that was rediscovered

by Cosimo de' Medici's book
scout and translated by

Marsilio Ficino.

There's no Greek original
of the Emerald Tablet

has ever come to light.

The earliest version
that we know of is,

appears in the 8th century.

And it's a version
by Jabir ibn Hayyan

who's the Arab alchemist
who's better known

in this Latinized
version as Gerber.

There's also a 9th century
version to come out

that was erroneously, it should
be to Appollonius of Tyna.

We also see some other
motifs that associate

Hermes Trismegistus with Egypt.

There's the Ibis
which is the bird

that's associated with him.

There's the dog, faithful,

trustworthy animal.

And you see the pyramids
in the background.

He's got one foot standing
on Typhon which is this

sort of demon dark character

in Egyptian mythology
that Hermes Trismegistus

was said to have defeated.

This is a symbolic
sort of side to that.

It's the older animal,

lower nature of ourselves that

the Hermeticist,
the magician defeats

and learns how to control

and makes use of.

And he also has in
his hands the caduceus

which is Hermes'
sort of magic wand.

We can see around
that it's a staff

encircled, entwined
by two serpents.

And at the top there's
this orb with wings.

Even though it's believed
that the Corpus Hermeticum

was written by Hermes
Trismegistus in
the ancient times

we're pretty clear that
it was more or less

written in the second or
third century in Alexandria,

which obviously still
is a city in Egypt.

It was founded by
Alexander the Great.

And Alexandria was
a fascinating city,

it was a fascinating
place at the time because

it's the meeting ground
of many, many different

sorts of ideas and
cultures and races

and beliefs and religions,
much like our own today,

much like our own sort
of multi-cultural,

multi-faith time today.

You had a lot of what's
called syncretism going on.

The Greeks were very
happy to learn about

the Egyptian gods.

The Egyptians were happy
to learn about the Greeks.

You also had large
Jewish population there,

and a variety, early Christian
movement going on as well.

So there was a kind of mash up,

kind of mix up between
different deities

and different gods
and different ideas.

And the whole idea of
Hermes Trismegistus,

Trice Greatest Hermes,
was one product of that.

The figure of Hermes
Trismegistus is more or less

a kind of amalgam of
the Egyptian god Toph

who's the god of magic,
the god of writing,

the scribe of the gods,
and the Greek god Hermes.

He was a messenger god,
also a god of writing,

a good of transition,

a god of crossroads and so on.

Now Jung was well aware
of the Hermetic tradition.

He knew about it a great deal,

but he focused on sort of later

developments of it in one sense.

Jung focused mostly on alchemy
and the Hermetic tradition.

Alchemy is considered
the Hermetic art.

But as I said earlier
it isn't a part of the

Corpus Hermeticum.

Alchemy was going
on in Alexandria.

And at the time, and
there's some evidence

that suggest that
some alchemists,

early alchemists in Alexandria
knew of the Hermeticists

who were there at the time

and some ideas crossed
over between them.

But Jung himself paid
more attention it seems

to later developments
of Hermeticism.

Most of the books that he

consulted, the works he
consulted in his writings

on alchemy tended to
come from the 16th

and 17th century.

But he did write an
important paper on

an Alexandrian alchemist
from the third century,

Zosimos, originally from
a city called Panopolis.

And Zosimos had some
connection with the

Hermeticists at the time.

He incorporates
some Hermetic ideas

into some of his
writings about alchemy.

So the alchemists, Hermeticists
and also another group,

the Gnostics, were
all contemporaries

in this time in the
second or third century

in Alexandria.

Again, Jung's great work,
one of his last works,

if not his last book,
Mysterium Coniunctionis,

if I pronounce that correctly,

published in 1955,

was Jung's sort of magnum
opus about alchemy.

And he writes about
Hermes in there

but he tends to see Hermes as
a kind of trickster figure,

as a kind of trickster
god in some way,

and that is a true aspect of it,

of Hermes, one aspect
of his character.

But as I'm going to
sort of get on to Jung's

whole sort of movement or theme

in Hermetic philosophy
that Jung didn't

pay too much attention to.

Again, Jung used many volumes

from Manly P. Hall's
library that he collected

and is still available
for study at the

Philosophical Research
Society in Los Angeles,

Manly P. Hall.

The early image of
Hermes, as I said,

came from his book.

But this is sort of the essence
of Jung's take on alchemy

is this unification
of the opposites.

Here we have the lunar
queen and the solar king

joining together.

We see the sun and the moon.

It's this bringing together
of these opposites.

Although Jung wrote large
halfway unreadable texts

about alchemy and a
variety of other things,

there's a short paper
that he did where he said

what the essence of alchemy was,

and it's something
that he called the
transcendent function.

And this is where the conscious
and the unconscious mind

come together, rather
than fighting it out

as they do most of the
time, they come together

and they produce
something that's

more than either of them.

It was a creative
union between the two

and some new thing
that wasn't thought of

that wasn't expected
comes of this.

And that's very much
along the lines of

this alchemical motif
that Jung focused on,

the bringing together
of the opposites.

In this sense it would be
creating the alchemical gold.

And we know that although
there were a lot of

alchemists who actually
tried to make gold,

I mean, and that does go back
to the early days in Egypt,

not only gold, the
actual metal that

they were trying to make,

they were trying to
make things golden,

they were trying to
come up with new ways to

basically make things
glitter and shine

and have the appearance of gold.

So there is actually
that root of alchemy.

But even as early as
this fellow Zosimos,

there's a spiritual
aspect that comes into it,

something to do with
inner transformation.

and Jung sort of took that
and ran with it as it were,

and as we said that's
what alchemy was about.

It's about this
inner transformation.

It's about making a
kind of inner gold.

And this is what comes out
of the transcendent function.

And Jung loyalists said that
the alchemists were doing

what he was doing
that they didn't know

that they were doing that.

They thought they were
doing something else.

They thought they were
doing these experiments,

manipulating matter,

going through a variety
of different operations.

Jung is saying by doing
that they were somehow

projecting unconscious material,

projecting what he
called the archetypes

onto these operations
and experiments.

And they were
doing unconsciously

something that Jung believed
that he had developed

or was able to somehow
formulate consciously.

And this is something that
he called active imagination.

We'll get back to
that a bit later on.

But essentially active
imagination is a way

of consciously inducing
this transcendent function.

It's a way of trying to
bring unconscious contents

together with the
conscious mind.

It's a way of
dreaming while awake.

It's a way of having
an inner journey.

It's a way of having an inner
visionary sort of experience.

Much like the visionary
experience I mentioned earlier

in which Hermes Trismegistus
was given this revelation

about the truth, the
true knowledge of

man, god, and the cosmos.

Another Hermetic art

that Jung was interested
in was astrology.

He studied astrology
throughout most of his career.

He didn't talk about it much
until later in his career.

Jung kept stumm a lot
about his interests in

Hermeticism or any
other esoteric or occult

kind of practice
because he wanted to

protect his standing
as a scientist.

In my book, Jung the Mystic,

it's sort of short introductory,

biographical study of Jung

but from this esoteric
point of view.

I originally wanted to
have a question mark here,

but the publisher thought
that would inhibit sales.

So we didn't have that.

But it raises the question
was Jung a mystic?

And Jung, throughout
hiw whole career,

said he wasn't.

In a very late interview,

he told the
interview that anyone

who thinks I'm a
mystic is an idiot.

And that would've included
quite a few people by that time,

not the least of which
was Jung's early mentor

and well friend Sigmund Freud.

So Jung himself argued
his whole career

that he was a scientist,
he was an imperiasist,

he wasn't doing mysticism,

he wasn't doing the occult,

he wasn't doing philosophy,

he was doing hard
kind of science.

The professor doth
protest too much I think

because anyone who's familiar
with Jung's work knows

that he was in this camp,

he was part of this
sort of tradition.

He was a scientist as well,

but he was part of this
esoteric sort of tradition.

But as I say Jung is
doing astrological charts

for his patients early on.

Though it's much later in
his career that he came out

and started talking
about it upfront.

And he was very interested in

the idea of the precession
of the equinoxes.

As early as 1940 Jung
was talking about

the age of Aquarius, the
age of Aquarius coming on,

and he predated the
hippies by at least

20 years if not more.

He was aware of these
changes going on

in the zodiac.

And in a late book called Aion,

it was published in 1951,

he more or less tries
to bring together

this idea of the precession
of equinoxes which I assume

you're all familiar with.

You know, it's the
movement of the zodiac

against the sun rising
and we're sort of,

I don't know where we are now.

We're kind of supposed
to be in the beginning

or about to be in the
beginning of Aquarius.

We're coming out
of, what was it?

Aries?

Pieces, sorry.

Coming out of
Pieces and all that.

Jung put his ideas
about the archetypes,

again, which I'm
assuming you know.

These fundamental sort
of psychic blueprints

that we're born with.

Jung was a bit ambiguous
about where they came from.

Do we inherit them genetically?

Are they part of the brain?

Are they something
that's built up over time

after millions and
millions and millions

and man have had
experience of women

we all inherit that now,

and likewise women for men.

But he also talked
about them in a way

that's more in line with
some of the Hermetic ideas

where they're kind of
these platonic ideals,

they're these kind of
fundamental patterns

or structures that exist
outside of time and space,

outside of physical reality.

But somehow their influence

is pressed onto it.

Jung was aware of, again,

astrology and he made use of it,

another Hermetic art or idea.

But what I'm gonna talk
about now is one that Jung

didn't really pay
much attention to,

and I'm actually
surprised that he did it.

And it's called the journey
through the planets.

Now in this revelation
that Hermes Trismegistus

was said to have had by
Nous, the Eternal Mind,

among many other
things Nous explained

the creation of the world.

And he explained
what happens to us

when we're born into the world.

I'm sorry, this is a
rather dull, boring

version of this but
I just try to get

the clearest kind
of picture of it

without a lot of Latin
that I can't read

or pronounce accurately.

But this is the old
Ptolemaic view of the world,

the Greek astronomer
Ptolomy had his vision

of the universe was dominant

until basically
Copernicus pointed out

that he was, you know,

some problems with it.

And then from Copernicus' work

we developed it into our own

modern heliocentric
view of the world.

This is the ancient
view where we have Earth

at the center,

and you have these concentric
circles with spheres

of the different planets
radiating from the Earth

up to the orbit of the
fixed stars and then the

Primum Mobile, the first
mover, the unmoved mover.

And then beyond that is in

different traditions,
some unmanifest reality

that we can't really talk about.

We don't really have
language to talk about this.

It's beyond anything we can say.

And the Hermetic sort
of creation myth,

basically Nous,
the Eternal Mind,

gets it into his head
to create a world

and he creates a second
Nous, the demiurge,

a kind of craftsman, a
kind of lieutenant god,

and says, "Why don't
you make me a world?"

And so the demiurge
makes this world

and basically Earth
at the center.

That's the space
where, you know,

the world, our world on
Earth is going to be made.

And the demiurge
makes these sort of

seven circles around it.

And out of different influences,
different attributes,

different characteristics
from these

concentric circles,
these spheres,

the Earth is made, and
the Earth is the place of

the elements and bodies
and time and space

and so on and so on.

And what happens is
Nous, the Eternal Mind,

basically wants to show off.

He wants somebody to
see his handiwork,

and so he creates
Man with a capital M,

that means man
and woman as well.

And he says, "Look
what I've done."

And Man is very
excited about this.

He pierces through the spheres

and sees the Earth, sees
this beautiful planet,

sees nature and all
that sort of thing.

Falls in love with his
reflection on water.

Nature herself sees
Man looking at her.

It's difficult to
avoid these sort of

gender ways of talking
about these things

but bear with me.

And basically the two of them
fall in love with each other,

Man descends into Nature,

and Nature embraces
Man and we'd be

pretty much been in that
situation since then.

But on his descent
down to nature

Man acquires characteristics
of these different spheres.

Takes on attributes from them.

If you think of
something starting out

as very etherial, very refined,

mist-like and
gradually condensing,

gradually getting
more and more solid

and taking on
different attributes

and then finally gets
down to the bottom here.

Now the idea, the journey
through the planets

is that Nous tells Hermes that

through this creation process,

Man has become a
creature of two worlds.

Man has a natural state,

a state that's
acquired by picking up

all these characteristics from

the different planetary
spheres, as a body,

existing time and space,

is subject to all the
laws and limitations and

conditions and constraints

that everything has that
exists in time and space.

And the way that this is
described and spoken of is that

the planets basically
control our fate.

the planets control
fate and destiny.

We on Earth are subject
to the influences

of these different
planetary forces

and they basically
call the shots.

And if you awaken though
to the Hermetic call,

if you want ot regain access to

your spiritual side,

as I said we have two natures,

you have a physical, earthly,
one in time and space,

but then we're also
a part of the source

from which creation started.

We're a part of
the eternal mind,

we're part of Nous.

And in fact when Nous
first speaks to Hermes

he basically says, "I'm
you talking to yourself.

"I'm the part of you
that you don't recognize

"and I'm talking to you,
I'm explaining to you

"what your true nature
is and your true place

"in reality is."

The central idea in
the Hermetic philosophy

was to journey back up

through the spheres,

journey back up through
the planetary circles.

And on each level you give
back what you acquired

or you transform it.

They talk about it
in different ways

but it's more or
less the same idea.

What was kind of an impediment,

what was the restraint on you,

what was something
that weighed you down

you transform it into
something useful,

you transform it into a power

that you can make use of,

and it empowers you.

Yourself becomes bigger
through these things.

And so the Hermeticists
would go up

through these spheres,

and that was the aim was to
go up through these spheres.

And different
Hermetic philosophers

would say that those who
don't do this journey,

they're trapped in fate
and they become wanderers

on the Earth which
is an interesting way

to talk about them because
the planets themselves

in Greek it means wanderer.

So, if you don't free yourself

from the influences
of the planets,

you remain sort of one
them on Earth itself.

And the ultimate
aim of the journey

through the planets was
to get beyond the stars.

There's a realm
past the last sphere

where you get into
the realm of causes,

the realm of the noumena
rather than the phenomena.

This is back to the source,
back to the spiritual energies

that created the cosmos
in the first place

and of which we're part of,

we have a strong
connection to it.

That's there but it's sunk.

It's hidden, it's obscured

by all the material that
we've acquired in our descent

from the source
down to the planets

through the planets
down to Earth.

Now a group who I
mentioned briefly earlier.

We have a very
similar sort of theme,

very similar idea,

and were contemporaries
with the Hermeticists

that Jung knew quite a bit about

and wrote quite a bit
about were the Gnostics.

This is an image of the
Gnostic god Abraxas.

Here's a variety of
different interpretations

of what Abraxas means.

Those of you who are
old enough to remember

the Hermann Hesse craze in
the late '60s, early '70s,

you know his novel Demian.

Abraxas is a central sort
of figure in that book.

This is a Gnostic
novel that Hesse wrote

after he went through a series
of psychoanalytic sessions

first with Jung and then
later with a disciple of Jung,

a fellow named Joseph Lang.

And another reference
from the past is that the

rock group Santana had
an album called Abraxas

I think in the
early '70s as well.

So as I said the
Gnostics were someone,

a group that Jung had been
reading about quite some time.

He says he first started
reading about them in 1912

and even told Freud, they were
still friends at the time,

that he thought
that psychoanalysis

could learn something
from the Gnostic Sophia.

Sophia means wisdom but it also

is a Gnostic diety,
a Gnostic goddess,

who, like all of us,
has fallen down to Earth

from the higher spheres and
has become lost on the Earth.

And one of the themes
or the metaphors

for the Gnostic journey
is to rediscover,

is to find lost Sophia,
find the lost wisdom

and bring her back up to
her more divine state.

Jung went back to
reading the Gnostics

in between 1918 and 1926.

And what had happened in between

his first reading
of them in 1912

and when he went back
was that depending

how you look at it he had
either a psychotic episode,

an extended one,
or he went through

a long process of
spiritual transformation

following his break with Freud.

If you're familiar
with the Red Book,

you're familiar with the
story between Freud and Jung.

Jung was a close,

Freud wanted Jung to
take on the mantle

of being the head of the
psychoanalytic movement.

Jung in one sense is
very happy to do that.

He had a great love for Freud.

He looked up to him
as sort of a father

but he also had his
genius of his own

and he wanted to
go on his own path,

and the two had many
different opinions

about a variety of
different things,

and eventually Jung felt
that he had to break away,

and he went through a traumatic
experience after that.

Of you've read Memories,
Dreams, and Reflections,

Jung talks at length about

what he went through.

He calls it his descent
into the unconscious.

And it was during
this crisis period

Jung is having a series
of waking dreams,

visionary experiences,

strange paranormal episodes.

This is when he
developed this process

that I mentioned earlier
called active imagination

where he developed
this way of actually

having a conversation, a talk
with the unconscious contents,

with the archetypes as it were.

We know that Jung felt a close
affinity with the Gnostics.

He told, I think
it's Jolande Jacobi,

one his followers that
the Gnostics were friends,

that is he felt
in their company.

And this was kind
of made official

in the early '50s when
one of the Gnostic texts

that were found at Nag
Hammadi in Egypt in 1945,

some of Jung's
followers got together

and bought one of these codexes

and it's named the Jung Codex.

So Jung's association of the
Gnostics is rather official.

One of the people
that Jung learned

about the Gnostics from was
a fellow named GRS Mead.

Mead was a brilliant
scholar, a translator,

an interpreter of ancient
Hermetic philosophy

who gets very little
attention these days.

Most academic scholars don't
pay much attention to him

because unlike them
Mead believed in it.

He had a passionate,

emotional,
existential investment

in these works.

He wasn't a detached
academic scholar

just doing it and it
could've been anything else.

It was something that
he really believed in.

Jung even traveled
to London once

to thank Mead for
his translation of
the Pistis Sophia.

That's a central Gnostic
text that was discovered

fairly early, earlier
than Nag Hammadi.

It was discovered
in the late 1700s

which talks about Jesus'
ministry after the resurrection.

It's a long text about
what Jesus taught

after he was resurrected.

There's vast differences
between the Gnostic

versions of Christianity
and what became

the central one later on.

And if you're familiar
Elaine Pegels' book,

The Gnostic Gospels,

and if you're not
familiar with it

it's definitely worth
reading 'cause she spells out

and very clearly, very readably

what were some of the
central differences between

early Christianity
and Gnosticism.

They all grew up in the same

kind of multi-cultural,
multi-faith mulch

that was happening in
Alexandria at the time.

Mead was also a secretary to
HP Blavatsky in her last days.

And after falling out
with theosophical society

he started the Quest Society.

And probably his
most important book

was his book on ostracism called

the Fragments of
a Faith Forgotten.

And just tangentially
PD Ouspensky

the philosopher and
followed Gurdjieff,

his original title for
the book that we know

is In Search of the Miraculous.

It was called Fragments
of a Forgotten Teaching,

but he realized that
Mead had got their first

with his title of the book
and so he didn't use it.

But there's enough of a
connection between Jung

and the Gnostics for
some Jung interpretators

to even say that Jung
essentially was a Gnostic.

And there's very good
reason to say this

because Jung himself
produced the Gnostic text.

His estranged, poetic
work that he wrote

during this breakdown
that he went through

following the break
up with Freud.

It's called Seven
Sermons to the Dead.

And again this notion
seven comes in.

We all know seven
is a big number

in the Hermetic esoteric world.

But when you start looking,

actually you're
surprised how many times

it does turn up.

And Jung tells a
story in Memories,
Dreams, and Reflections

that while he was going
through this crisis

or this paranormal,
psychic, visionary

experiences were
happening to him,

he's in his house in Kuüsnacht
which is just outside Zurich,

on Lake Zurich.

His family's there.

They have been experiencing
these things as well,

and they suddenly hear this
ringing or loud banging

at the front door.

And they go to see and in
traditional ghost stories,

startled there's no one there.

But then Jung starts
hearing this voice

telling him that the dead
have come from Alexandria,

well they've come from
Jerusalem actually,

the dead have come
from Jerusalem

and they need to speak to him.

They want him,
they have to tell,

he has to tell them, he has
to give them the answers

to the questions they're asking,

to the things they're seeking.

And so in this visionary state

he writes this
strange poetic work,

called The Seven
Sermons to the Dead,

which is very much like the
kind of visionary material

that you do find in
the Corpus Hermeticum.

And basically it's
prophetic revelations

passed on to the dead by
Basilides of Alexandria

Basilides was a Gnostic,
a famous Gnostic teacher

from this period in Alexandria

that had been talking about.

The central theme in the
Seven Sermons to the Dead

is Jung's idea of individuation.

It's the need to
differentiate one's self

from what he calls the Pleroma.

The Pleroma is this Gnostic idea

of this kind of one
that's beyond everything.

It's the unmanifest, the
undifferentiated one.

And just in the process of
going down from the source

down to Earth is a process
of differentiation.

Likewise in Jung's
psychology, the process of

coming from the
unconscious matrix

into your own individual
self is a process

of differentiation.

What is this gnosis that
Jung is talking about?

It's a Greek word for knowledge,

but it's particular
kind of knowledge.

Another Greek word
for knowledge,

episteme is a knowledge
we're most familiar with.

It's book-learning knowledge.

It's knowledge that you
acquire step by step.

It's knowledge that
you get when you go

to the British Library.

It's knowledge that comes in
a logical kind of sequence.

And it comes from observation
or experimental reasoning.

But gnosis is a kind
of sudden knowledge,

and it's not only the knowledge,

it's the experience of
having the knowledge.

So it's not only that
you know something,

you have the experience
of knowing it.

And Jung himself famously

in a late interview
with him in 1959

when he's asked by John Freeman

who's doing an interview
for the BBC about

whether he believed in God,

Jung said, "I don't
believe, I know."

So Jung had this
kind of experience,

and this experience that
he had during this crisis

when he had these
visionary states.

There's a difference
between the Gnostic

approach to gnosis
and the Hermeticists.

In a central sense, the Gnostics

were more paranoid.

The Gnostics believed
that the world we live in

is a world created by
a kind of idiot god,

this kind of false god
who's created this world

and we are trapped in it.

And there's a true
god beyond the world.

And we still have a
spark from that true god.

And like the Hermeticists
we have to get back to it.

But whereas the
Gnostics want to escape

from the world in some sense,

the Hermeticists
don't necessarily

want to escape from the world

but they want to learn
knowledge within it

so that they can be who they
truly are within the world.

They can fulfill their
real responsibilities

and take their true
place within the world,

not to escape it
to another realm,

but not to be trapped
and conditioned by

the powers of fate.

And what happens in
the gnosis experience

for the Hermeticists was that

when they finally
journey past the planets

they get up into these areas,

what they called the
8th and 9th spheres.

And these are spheres
that are outside time,

they're outside space,
they're beyond the cosmos.

They're beyond the universe.

We don't quite know
exactly what they did.

We don't have a
lot of information

about the Hermeticists.

We have more information
about the Gnostics

than we do about
the Hermeticists.

One thing we don't know, we
don't know any of their names.

We don't know any of
the people at the time

what their names were
who were doing this

'cause they signed the text
either Hermes Trismegistus

or some other kind
of sage character.

They were anonymous.

There's some conjecture
based on a lot of research

into contemporary
practices at the time.

But we have good
reason to believe that

there are Gnostic
communities, excuse me,

Hermetic communities
outside of Alexandria,

out into the desert.

They shared space with the
Gnostics and the Essenes

around the same time.

But they did go through a
variety of different practices

to induce these sort
of visionary states.

They did kind of chanting
with what is called

barbarous words of evocation.

They put together kind
of Greek syllables

or different kind of
words and smash them up

and would chant
these kind of things

and induce a kind of
non-rational state
of consciousness

to get beyond the
rational, logical mind.

They had guided inner journeys,

guided inner meditations

much like we have them today.

And when they were taken
up through the spheres

and they finally
got up into the 8th

and the 9th spheres,
they were then

considered that they had joined

the Brotherhood of the Ogdoad,

it's the Brotherhood
of the Eighth.

And the 8th sphere and
even the 9th sphere was,

as I said, this kind
of mystical experience

in which they had this
experience of gnosis

when they had the true vision,

they had the true understanding

of their relations to the cosmos

and to god and to nous.

And they had two
responses to that.

On some of the texts
they talk about

them singing these
songs of praise.

GRS Mead translated a group of

these songs of praise
called the Hymns to Hermes.

And they're rather
ecstatic, inspirational

kind of text.

And the other was silence.

It was a kind of
mystical silence

where they can't say anything.

They're beyond words.

They reach the
sphere where words

can no longer apply
to their experience.

And what they
called another term

of reaching this
8th and 9th sphere

is becoming Aion.

Aion in English
means a long time,

but in the Greek
and in the context

of Hermeticism and Gnostics,

it was a state outside of time.

And this is a picture of

a mithraic Aion.

I can't go into much,

I can't go into detail
about Mithras now but

the mithraic religion was
another mystery religion

around the same
time as the Gnostics

and the Hermeticists and so on.

And we see the snake
wrapped around him

much like the snake wrapped
around Hermes' caduceus.

If you can make out the picture,

he's got the astrological
signs on him,

and the wings and so on.

And he's lion-headed.

And in an interesting
but controversial book

called the Jung Cult by a
fellow named Richard Noll,

he argues that Jung
himself tried to start

a kind of cult,

an esoteric cult with himself

as the sort of messiah figure.

And Jung records a
series of visions

where he saw himself as
a character like this.

And on one of the covers
I think of the book,

there's a picture of
this with Jung's head

on the top of it
rather than the lion.

So, I mean, it's a good
read, the Jung Cult,

it's very controversial.

A lot of people have argued
against it and all that.

But this is a particular
reference because

it's been said that
Jung himself tried to

make himself this
character in some way

and to have a
following around him.

I'm just gonna quickly
run through some parallels

to this same sort of
journey through the planets

because it strikes me,

it's an archetype
in the same way

that Jung talked about
various other archetypes.

We can see the same
sort of thing through

the Kabbalah and
the Tree of Life

where you start off from Malkuth

which is our sphere
here, the Earth,

and you work your way up through

the different sephiroth.

The moon, Yesod's the moon,

Hod is Mercury,
Netzach is Venus,

Tiphereth is the sun.

We got Mars and
Jupiter and so on,

up until I guess Binah
is considered Saturn,

and then you have the
fixed stars and the

Primum Mobile as well.

And then beyond that in
the Kabbalistic system

you have what's called
the Ain Soph Aur

which is this limitless light

which is much like the pleroma,

much like the sphere
beyond the stars

that I've just talked about.

It also turns up in
a more modern version

in Gurdjieff's Ray of
Creation in the fourth way.

This is more or less taken
from Ouspensky's book,

In Search of Miraculous.

In Gurdjieff's system,
you have the absolute

again which is like the
one, the Hermetic one,

or the pleroma.

And from it descends in
this emanationist form

through less
absolute conditions.

So you have the absolute
or worlds which I suspect

means all galaxies, all suns,

all the stars within our galaxy,

the sun, the planets, Earth.

We're not quite at
the lowest point.

The moon is lower
than ourselves.

But in the Gurdjiefs
work what one wants to do

is to subjecting yourself
to Gurdjieff's very rigorous

and difficult practices
and exercises.

You free yourself
of different laws

that are associated with
the different planets

In the Ray of Creation much
like in the Hermetic idea

where you free yourself
of the influences

of the different planets.

We can only get as far as
the all suns Gurdjieff said.

We can't really go
any further than that.

Again, that's much
like getting up to the

end of the planetary spheres.

Another system, it's
Rudolf Steiner's

notion of the evolution
of consciousness.

Steiner says we start
off in something

he called Old Saturn.

I don't know why he
calls them these names.

They're rather kind of clumsy.

Old Saturn, Old
Sun, then the moon,

and then on Earth, and
then they're moving

to go back up to
the source again.

So we start off in
the spiritual realm,

the less solid or less condensed

the more etheric kind of state,

and over time we condense.

I mean, with Steiner the
evolution of the cosmos

and the evolution of
consciousness go hand in hand.

They're both together.

And the Earth is
sort of rock bottom

and you can't go
any lower than that

and you move your way back up.

So there's another
version of the journey

through the planets
with Steiner.

After our Earth incarnation
which we're now,

the next one is Jupiter
and then Venus and so on.

And even in something
as old we can say,

and as ubiquitous these days

as the sort of
shamanic tradition,

you have a similar idea, the
sort of ladder to heaven.

And many accounts
of what shamans do

is that they put
themselves through a series

of practices into this
kind of visionary state

and they somehow climb a ladder

or they acquire wings and they

fly back up back to
the spirit world,

back to the source.

Some people even said
this motif is embodied

in our own DNA.

Jeremy Narby who
wrote a book called

the Cosmis Serpent, he's
an anthropologist who was

influenced by reading
Michael Harner,

another anthropologist
account of taking the

drug ayahuasca.

And Harner says that he
encountered these snakes

in his visions that
gave him ancient wisdom,

and the snakes he said
resided in an ancient

part of the brain.

Narby took the ayahuasca.

He had a similar
experience where he met

these two boa constrictors.

They didn't eat him
but they imparted

ancient wisdom to him.

One of the things
they told him is,

well, one of the things he
learned through this experience

was that the plants
talked to him.

The plants told him this
ancient wisdom they had

through his experience
with the ayahuasca.

So through this
visionary experience

he spoke to

a similar kind of spiral ladder

within the plants itself,

and it's embodied in
our own DNA as well.

And just to get back
to the Hermetic belief,

we have a similar
theme here, again,

with Hermes' caduceus
where you have

the entwined snakes,

could be the entwined
spiral shape of the DNA.

And we have the caduceus,

the staff going through.

Now, some people have suggested

that the two snakes
are the two sides

of the sides brain,
left and right side,

the two halves of it.

It's the
conscious/unconscious mind.

It could be either of those,

it could be both of them,

it could be many
other things as well.

But they come together
and their union,

the joining produces
this orb, solid,

a whole, it's the one,

and the wings, it's
lifting itself above

the physical state.

It's going up into
the higher realms.

Now what has all this
got to do with Jung?

That's a good question
but I don't have time

to go into it right now.

Sorry.
[laughter]

I mentioned a few tiems
Jung's active imagination

and I've talked
about Jung's crisis,

his descent into
the unconscious.

But we can see this
descent as ascent as well,

and we're already seen it
in the Hermetic tradition

where the soul, the
source goes down,

and then it works
its way back up.

Heraclides said the
way up and the way down

are the same.

So, what I want to sort of say,

what I've slowly started
getting to is that

earlier I said that
Jung has been accused of

psychologizing alchemy.

Many people were
critical of Jung's

ideas about alchemy.

And not only rational scientists
but practicing alchemists

or esotericists.

They said that he took
something that was spiritual.

They complained from both sides.

They complained from
the spiritual side

and also from the material side.

They say he took something
that's a spiritual practice

and turned it into a
psychological practice,

or a kind of
psychological therapy,

and he also complained
that he took something

that was actually happening
in the outerworld.

They're practicing
alchemist who say

there is a real transformation
of matter going on here.

It isn't something
that's just going on

in the psyche of the alchemists

and is mirrored outside
in their practices.

There's a real sort of
transformation going on

and they say that
Jung psychologized

alchemy in this way.

Well, I wanna say we
can Hermetacize Jung.

Jung said he's
discovered this practice

of active imagination
through his descent

into the unconscious
and he based

all of his psychology on it.

Well, did he discover it or
did he come upon something that

others have known for
a long time already.

Did he come upon something
that the Gnostics

and the Hermeticists
and a variety of other

esotericists knew before?

I mean, this may not
be news but it's a way

to look at it in
a different way.

And as we're talking
about eternal knowledge

I think we have reason to say

that Jung came upon
something through this crisis

that was known at
different times

to different people
and different areas

and different cultures.

But it's something that's
part of our own make up.

It's something that's part
of our sort of structure.

But this is perhaps
important today in a

more significant sense
because back in the day

when the Ptolemaic view

of the concentric
circles was dominant,

it was taken seriously.

The Earth was at the center.

There were these
concentric spheres,

crystalline spheres that
moved around the Earth,

and the other idea was that

the realm of the fixed
stars and the realms beyond,

they were somehow different.

If you went out there,

matter would be different.

It wouldn't be the
same as matter here

in the sub-lunar realms.

It would somehow be
tangibly different.

Now we know that's
not the case now.

We know that if you
send a rocket out

beyond the solar system

matter isn't going
to be very different.

Okay, it'll be different
at a black hole,

that's an exception.

Pretty much if you keep going

out, out, out into the area
that they call the fixed stars

and you could
somehow reach out and

grab a piece of
matter, it wouldn't be

any different than the
matter here on Earth.

So this makes the point
that, as I said earlier,

this journey is
an inward journey.

It isn't a real journey out.

It's real but it's not a journey

out into the physical planets,

out into the physical stars,

it's a journey inward.

And this again
was something that

the Hermeticists knew.

One of the central
themes of Hermeticism is

man is a microcosm.

Man contains the whole universe.

Within ourselves we contain
the whole macrocosm,

as above so below
to which we can add

I'm not the first
one to do this,

as within so without.

We try to say as
behind so in front,

but that doesn't really work.

But what does this mean that

Man is a microcosm?

Now, you can take it
in a very literal sense

that heart is like the sun,

or like the sexual
organs are like the moon

or something like that.

There's a very literal way,

lots of books
written about that.

But I'd rather look at it
in broader sort of sense

that in some way
our consciousness,

our inner worlds contain
the entire world,

the whole universe is in here

and it's in there,
and there, and there.

Maybe not you but in
there, in there, in there,

and there as well.

We contain the whole thing.

So wee have everything we
need to take this journey

through the planets.

I mentioned earlier
that Hermes Trismegistus

was considered to
be an Egyptian sage.

He learned his wisdom in Egypt

or what we know of
his Egyptian wisdom

comes from Hermes Trismegistus.

And in very interesting
series of books,

a fellow named Jeremy Naydler,

not to be confused
with Jeremy Narby.

He's argued that in many
ways this Egyptian wisdom

is very similar to what
we know as shamanic

hunter traditions as well.

His central argument is that
the Egyptian book of the dead

isn't only for fundamentally

a funeral text.

It isn't only something
to be read after

someone's dead already

and to guide their soul,

much like the Tibetan
book of the dead is.

He's saying that it's actually,

and we know the Egyptian
book of the dead

is a huge collection
of different writings

from different sources
over different time

and it's always been added to.

The Tibetan book of the
dead is much more selective,

and also we know that
there isn't really,

in Tibet there isn't a
Tibetan book of the dead.

This was a name
Evans-Wentz gave to the

collection of texts
that he had translated.

But there is an Egyptian
book of the dead,

and it's a different
funerary text that come from

different places and so on.

But Narby, excuse me,
Naydler argues that

these texts were used

in initiatory practices.

And one of the things
that one learns

through these texts is
how to separate the soul

from the body.

This is the Bah rising

up above the,

mainstream
Egyptologists would say

that's someone dead.

That's the sarcophagus
and the Bah is lifting

up out of it to go do its thing.

And Naydler saying, actually no.

This is part of an
initiatory practice here.

We are the initiators
learning how to separate

his inner soul from the body.

And if you might remember from
the beginning of the talk,

I say when Hermes
Trismegistus has this vision,

his body is quiet,
his senses are quiet,

he's in a deep, relaxed state,

almost in a trance
kind of state.

Naydler is saying that
this kind of thing

that's going on here,

this was the Egyptian
wisdom that people

like Pythagoras and Plato

and other sages of the
olden days learned.

And it's also in
the hermetic work.

It's also a part of
their Corpus Hermeticum.

Originally as I said
it was thought that

Hermes anti-dated
Plato and Pythagoras.

They learned from him.

The text written later,

and this led some
scholars to say

there's no Egyptian
connection whatsoever.

It's all Greek philosophy
and some early Christianity

in there as well.

But if what Naydler
is saying is true

that this sort of initiatory
practice on learning

how to release the
soul from the body

is part of the Egyptian wisdom

and if people like Pythagoras
and Plato did go there

then there is a
Egyptian connection

to the Hermetic philosophy.

It's not just Greek
philsophy mixed up

with some other stuff
going on at the time.

It has its roots
in Egyptian ideas.

And what I wanna
say is that Jung

sort of came upon this
during his crisis.

He had a very
active imagination.

Carl Jung did, if you
know the Red Book,

I don't have to
convince you of that.

This is one of the
central images from it.

This is an inner guide
that Jung encountered

during his crisis, Philemon,

that Jung said Philemon
existed in his head.

He had nothing to do with him.

And Philemon himself
was surprised to think

that Jung believe that
everything going on his head

had something to do with him.

He said, well, there
are things in here

that have nothing
to do with you.

You just happen to open this
door and come in here now.

This stuff's going on all
the time whether you know

about it or not.

You've just found
your way in here now.

It's got nothing to do with you.

The psyche has an
objective content.

Aldous Huxley came to the same

conclusion after his
experiences with mescaline

and other sort of
visionary practices

when he said the mind has its,

and he's writing in
the mid 20th century,

the mind has its own
unexplored Amazonian basins.

It has its own dark continents.

It has its own Borneo
and things like that.

And when we travel into
it we're encountering

objective realities and
entities that exist there

and they have nothing
to do with us.

Now you can imagine why
Jung, a psychiatrist

and psychologist didn't want

too many people to know
that he was talking

to people inside his head.

That's the kind of thing
people came to him about

and talked to him about.

So we can understand
that he didn't want

news of that to get
around very much.

And so we can understand
why kept the Red Book secret

for many, many years.

But we look at this,
this has sort of

a kind of Egyptian
motif to it as well,

certainly an Alexandrian one.

And as I said
earlier, when Jung was

received the revelation of
the Seven Sermons to the Dead,

he was speaking through
the voice of Basilides,

the ancient Gnostic
from Alexandria.

I'm saying, Jung
basically rediscovered

or tripped upon or stumbled upon

something that the
Hermeticists were doing

centuries earlier.

And his encounter
with the archetypes

that took place
during this crisis

in which he built up his
own psychology around,

we can see this in the
same way as the Hermetic

encounter with the planets,
of the different forces,

impinging on the pseudo
planets which we have to

either free ourselves
from or transform

into something
useful and creative.

Jung's encounter
with the archetypes

is practically the same thing.

Like the planets the
archetypes push us around

until we become aware of them

and we can integrate them
into our conscious mind.

Until we do that we're
compelled to do things

we're pushed, influenced, in
a variety of different ways.

We're acting out the
influences of the archetypes,

just like the Hermeticists,

just like those of us who
don't take the Hermetic journey

or acting out the influences
of the planets on us.

We're controlled by them.

We're caught in the
wheels of necessity

as one of the
Hermeticists spoke of.

Now, very, very briefly,
last two things.

I mentioned the twin
serpents around the caduceus

that some people
have seen this as the

two sides of the brain
or the unconscious

and the unconscious
twirled together

and producing this winged orb.

I mentioned earlier Jung's idea

of the transcendent function.

That's what the essence of
his active imagination was,

his dialogue between conscious
and the unconscious mind

producing something
new, some new symbol

that resolved some horrible
situation you're in.

That gives you insight in
some problems you can't solve.

What Jung was doing when
he was in these states

and also what people like
Rudolf Steiner and Swedenborg

who I mentioned earlier
with Ouspensky too,

in other context,

they're doing
something each of us

experience at least
twice a day when we

go to sleep at night or
whenever we go to sleep

and we wake up in the day
or whenever we wake up.

We go through this
intermediate state,

the twilight state.

It's both sleeping and
waking at the same time.

You can talk about day dreaming

as a kind of night waking.

You can say, turn
it around in a way.

It's called
hypnagogia which is a

slightly impronounceable name.

But it basically means,

hypnagogia means
sort of sleep guide.

Gogue is a Greek word meaning

it's someone who takes you down,

leads you somewhere.

Hypnosis sleep.

So this state leads
you into sleep.

And there's some
researchers who split hairs,

and as we're coming out of sleep

they call it hypnopompic.

The pomp, the sort of the
ceremonial procession out.

But they're pretty
much the same, I think.

My own experience, we can all,

I'm sure some of you have
been induced into this

during my talk so you must

have some first-hand
experience of what

I'm trying to go on about here.

My own experience, it's much
better to try to do this

early in the morning
than late at night.

If you try to stay awake
as you're falling asleep

you can catch some
of these images,

but more times than not
these minor experience

you induce the
state of insomnia.

But if you can just lie
in bed a little bit later

in the morning when
you're waking up,

you can be aware of
this intermediary state.

And it's different from dreaming

because in dreaming you're
totally immersed in the dream.

You're in the dream,
you forget who you are

or what you're doing or

chairs don't fly, all
this kind of stuff.

You're completely
immersed in it,

you accept everything.

In this intermediate
that you can consciously

see the images,

you can constantly see the dream

or the proto-dream
images coming.

And you also still aware of your

external surroundings.

So you're aware
of the outer world

but you're also aware of this
inner processes going on.

And the best book
about hypnagogia,

it was published in
1987 by a fellow named

Andreas Mavromatis.

I write about his work in a bit

and a lot of the things when
talking about in my other book,

or the book having
to do with this talk,

Quest For Hermes Trismegistus.

This is about, basically
it's kind of a search

for this character Hermes
throughout history.

I also write about
it in a book called

the secret history
of consciousness

where I use this idea
of hypnagogia as a theme

relating different sort of
philosopher's consciousness

like Steiner and others.

When Steiner went
into his states

and he read the Akashic record,

I'm not reducing what he
was doing to hypnagogia

but we able to go into
these kind of states.

When Swedenborg was taken on

journeys to heaven
and hell by angels

he was able to induce himself
into these sorts of states.

And where these
encounters take place

even though these
parts of the brain,

and hypnagogia is
involved with the older

parts of the brain.

I mentioned earlier
that Jeremy Narby

and Michael Harner when
they took the ayahuasca

and they had these
encounters with the snakes,

the snakes lived.

They resided in some old
part of the brain they said.

Now there is a reptilian
part of the brain.

This connection between
this ancient wisdom, right,

and an ancient
part of the brain.

It's an ancient wisdom,

it is ancient in one sense,
really, physical sense because

it's being generated
or it's being induced

or access to it is through
this older part of the brain.

And what we're
getting access to is

something that
Jung's colleague and

other journeyer into
the inner worlds,

Henri Corbin called
the Mundus Imaginalis

which is the imaginal world.

Not the imaginary world,

not the fantasy world
of what I'm gonna do

later on today or if only
had a million dollars

I could go on a
journey or something.

It's this world of these images

that's halfway between the pure

spiritual world, of pure being,

and the physical world.

Now, where Steiner went,

where Swedenborg
went on his journeys

to heaven and hell
where Jung went

when he descended
into the unconscious

where the Hermeticists
went on their journeys

to the planets, they all

went into this imaginal
realm which is a real

objective realm.

It really exists.

It exists
metaphorically in here.

So, in conclusion let me
say that if we want to

take a journey
through the planets,

we can do that ourselves because

we have a head full of stars.

And they're waiting for
us to say hello to them.

Thank you very much.

[applause]