 All of these texts where we have to tow a weird line They need to tow a line with the exception of the so-called Gnostic literature for whom dualism is their answer Monism comes with the problem with a problem right monism comes to the problem that clearly eagle And you got to do something with it You have to explain where it comes from and how to defeat it But the world itself is somehow deficient and broken and the task is to climb out of it ancient Alexandria Was that you had 15 20 different groups of people out there in the streets of Alexandria being like we found Right whether it's Stoics with their Apothea Whether it's the way of Hermes whether it was the various schools and so-called Gnosticism or various schools and so-called Christianity, you know the Jews what a sight it must have been You talk about the marketplace of ideas, but you know, it's nothing like it must have been back then It must have been a positive this cornucopia of People competing and can you imagine a world where there's a hermeticist and a Gnostic and you know the middle platonic philosophers looking down their nose that everyone no one's gonna get left out of salvation everyone was shopping and Can you imagine being that illiterate shopper and you can't read these books? You can't read what they said. You're like, have you heard about the way of Hermes have you heard about the way of Valentinas? Have you heard about the way of Jesus? Have you heard about the way of Seth? I just want to re-emphasize that I really do appreciate you taking the time especially on a Show like this is just getting started out. Hey, man. Look everybody starts at zero subscribers So I remember my distinctly remember looking at my thing and looking at it and it's at zero subscribers So and I'm you know, you're a great guy. You're clearly like, you know, you're doing the hard work of Working through this material and so I'm I'm absolutely want to support support you and also just like I think that you're gonna be a really great content creator in terms of creating Non-click-baity really good venues for for scholars to discuss. So I Want I want to be on the ground floor of that man. Thank you Like I said, I wanted to talk about Poimandres I just kind of went through it and so I wanted to touch upon a Subject that you know a thing or two about Apocalyptic literature the Merkaba Literature things like that, but I wanted to look at it from the lens of Hermetic literature and just Kind of what maybe we can't say that it's genetic borrowing, but we can definitely tell that there's something going on there in terms of Like it's in it's in the ether so to speak And I just want to put out a disclaimer for our viewers when we compare these subjects We are not saying they're genetic links. I am following Jonathan Z Smith's Axiom that for any kind of comparison to be interesting We have to posit that there's a difference and the differences make it interesting. So that's where we're coming from We're not saying this Characters like this dying and raising God whatever we're just Comparing the text for their own sake So we're gonna talk about Poimandres dr. Sledge so in this text the character Really seems to be Kind of almost in a manic state. He's he's almost like in an altered state of consciousness like you see in something like in the Gnostic Nagamati literature like something like it's Ostrianos like they're in the state of almost mania and then they have this vision of this Poimandres, who's basically like a dr. Manhattan type character. I imagine Let's frightening. I think though. Oh, yeah Yeah, let's right thing and I think I think in fact that I think the Corpus a medicum either 13 or 11 does use the term mania for the state they're in so that I think you're exactly right that is the that is the you know In the the Corpus a medicum is leaning on the old platonic idea of the mania and in the phaedrus among other texts But yeah, I think this is this is they They are in an altered state of consciousness and I would argue I think that That Corpus a medicum one is downstream of someone's It's downstream of phenomenology, which is to say this is a text that this is a text that is the I think is the result of someone's Mystical experience Ditto with the discourse in the eighth and ninth and stuff like that. So I think that a lot of this literature is downstream of of phenomenology Yeah, one thing I found really interesting about Poimandres is When you compare it with something like on the origin of the world Reality of the rulers and not commodity codex and the not commodity codices Well those texts seem to have a very negative view Of all this stuff like Poimandres is almost like love story and I know that Honegraf kind of thinks similar. I don't know about this actually Oh, yeah, I mean you're absolutely right. I mean the Corpus a medicum calls the world the second God And so and by the world they mean the physical cosmos, right? And and as we've mentioned before the Corpus a medicum has is a spectrum some texts are more dualists some texts are more Monists, but Poimandres is very solidly on the on the team of the cosmos is the second God And in so far as it is a second God derivative of the first Unknown God or or maybe noose. It is beautiful. It is perfect. It is sublime This is not, you know, the nightmare that is the Hypothesis of the Archons or whatever were universes of prison and and all this sort of stuff. No, like this is a You break through this is sort of the cosmos moment called Allah Carl Sagan, right? Where you you get to gaze into the beauty of of the cosmos and the not only do you get to gaze into the beauty of it But the beauty of it embraces you and And that is that is I Don't know about you Jason. You know, I'm so awash and Nagamati. I'm so awash and and In so much of this sort of world pessimism that exists in a lot of this ancient literature That when you report Mondres it really comes across as positively beautiful where Where you you poke your head through the veil and the and the beauty of the of the cosmos Elevates and and embraces you It's just such a refreshing Such a refreshing change of pace Compared to you know, like you said the only origin of the world or the hypothesis on the reality of the rulers You're like, oh god more archons Yeah, and I can completely see where I Know that it's probably not the most historical thing to do But I like to read things like when I'm reading it personally as a reader from a more empire critical standpoint So I can totally understand where on the origin of the world or you know reality of the rulers are coming from You know, and they're like, okay, you were a fool sockless You're not the creator of the world But I just want to contrast that kind of attitude with what you find in point Mondres 114 So I'm just going to read this really quickly So this is from point Mondres 114 the man broke through the vaults and stopped and stooped to look through the cosmic framework Nature smiled for love when she saw him in the water She saw the shape of man's fairest form when the man saw the water like himself as it was in nature He loved it nature took hold of her beloved hugging him all about and embraced him for they were lovers That's from the coconut paper translation. That is just mind-blowing to me. Just like the beauty of that, you know It's so great. You know, so I love the you know If you read some of the early all chemical literature also producing the Alexandria in context one of my favorite writers is pseudo-democratists and His his favorite refrain is always nature and rejoices in nature Which tells me actually that I think a lot of these early hermiticists There's a reason why alchemy and hermiticism got linked together. I think that that We could go into this more, but I think that they actually are there's a genetic relationship there and I think the fact that the deep interest in the technical hermetica in alchemy is only possible because of the deep philosophical Love of nature Because if you fundamentally hate nature and if nature is fundamentally bad in nature all this is evil Then you only want to get out of it You don't want to tinker around with it to understand it better to learn to rejoice in it nature rejoices in nature and I Really, I really love not only the the deep Sublimity of poimandres in the hermeticum when it comes to their love of the physical world their love of being embodied at some level but also the uptake of that in the in the in the physicalism of Learning to tinker with it In terms of alchemy and so I I think those two things are very close. I think they're actually genetically related and I have a it just makes me very Happy in a way in a way that I've never I've never Personally understood the interest in nosticism, but I really do at some level dig hermeticism Precisely because of that right the that beautiful view of physical reality And not the diminishing of it. I really appreciate that Absolutely, and yeah, we can definitely talk further about These alchemical things that's definitely your area. I'm not as well versed in alchemy alchemy at all That's why I go to your videos. I'm like, oh, he does so much about this stuff It's just so awesome you know, I used to read a lot of Crowley and and Deon fortune and all that stuff when I was in college and Apparently after I left like like you said, there was a explosion and quote-unquote respectability for this stuff So that's definitely exciting for me. I'm definitely enjoying all the Scholarship resources that I do get from your channel on your patreon. So thank you for that So just a couple more questions just kind of We talked about the more positive aspects of Poimandres Let's kind of circle back to the adjacent Jewish apocalyptic elements that you find in the pseudoprographic literature second, you know, Enoch was a really big Parallel I kind of saw because You know, you have this concept in the Poimandres of casting off the vices in the spheres and you kind of find the same thing and Something like second Enoch with when he's talking about like the sun and the moon and all the different Deities I can't remember what chapter it was but And then something in testament Solomon where he's talking to the the seven demons, right? And it's just is this something that's just common coin at the time um Or is it some kind of more conscious borrowing in the hermetica? I It's so hard to say right that what what's the Man, what's the what's the cultural milieu and what's the genetic borrowing? You know, it's impossible to all these lines It seems to me that there is some sense in All of these texts where they have to tow a weird line They need to tow a line with the exception of the so-called Gnostic literature for whom dualism is their answer And that's not true of all so-called Gnostics either um Monism comes with the problem with a problem right monism comes to the problem that clearly evil exists Clearly evil exists and you got to do something with it You have to explain where it comes from and how to defeat it and I think that the way that A lot of non-dualists deal with it is by positing that there is some kind of minor cosmic tragedy That is overcomeable and that minor cosmic tragedy Is it's some of a link with the structure of reality? and one has to pass out of the structure of physical reality to ultimately undo it And so that's true of of Lots of texts. It's true of the murk of our literature. That's true of A so-called Gnostic literature. It's true of the Corpus Medico. We see it in second Enoch Even the ascension of azea right where he has to you know go down and go up So What they do right is they basically say that the the world itself is somehow Deficient and broken and the task is to climb out of it um Or at least the broken aspects of it So it seems like this was just a way of of of answering the question where you have a relatively omnipotent god Which is true of lots of these traditions. Most of them that aren't radically dualist and The way that you fix it is saying well, there's a radically perfect god that created a a That from which an imperfect universe emerged and the task is to ultimately ascend out of that imperfection And then there's a shade of How imperfect it is right, you know From platinus where matter is just basically the last bits of reality tattering off into the void always imagine like the end of your The end of your genes tattering off into the dirt and stuff as a weather out Always like that image of platinus's vision of matter Um or you know, whatever image But for whatever reason in the corpus of medicum Right is the idea that you have these daimons that actually penetrating into your soul that are stuck in you And you have to basically exercise of them and then you can you know ascend into into the The ogdua the anyod and maybe beyond um So they all have some flavor of that And some of them even have more radical versions, you know in in 30 knock right where you can be transformed into an angel And maybe even in paul where you can be transformed Uh in some kind of way you ascend and become transformed So I think all of them have some version of of that because they have to square a very simple problem The if the world if there's just the one How do we get to plurality and why is it plurality bad? Uh, and you can see it in the neoplatinian theory of procession and recession You can see it in the christian theory of salvation. You can see it in the the um In the hermetic version of ascending through the the spheres up to the ogdua the anyod They all have some version of that and I think that it's not because they're borrowing from each other so much Is that they have a shared set of philosophical They have a shared philosophical problem And they offer a different solution for that philosophical problem And by the way, you still see that being worked itself out in the middle ages a kabbalah assumes a basically neoplatinian framework and even the 13th century it's a shocking How similar the kabbalistic answer is in the 1280s in the zohar that you see in Literature of the second third and fourth centuries of the common era it is not because they're influencing each other It's because once you assume a certain logic only other certain kinds of logics are going to get you out of it and you don't have to There doesn't have to be some kind of like red thread of narcissism You know needled all the way through the this and that and the kathars and all this You just assume certain kinds of problems And you're going to only have a certain set of solutions that and that solution that's going to look pretty similar and unsurprisingly They look pretty similar all things told well said um So our final question Kind of getting away from the the muck of creation and the the question that The existential questions that all these people have while creating an identity um, I wanted to end on a more positive note just talking about um You know poymandres, you know at the end um, you know starting in poymandres 126 he he's he's kind of returning From his you know ascent and he's coming down and uh, you know similar to something like zostrianos and you know, naghamadi codex You know eight You know one You know, he's they they both have this mission But you could tell with poymandres as opposed to zostrianos. It's more It almost feels kind of more elitist to me versus with poymandres. It's a very um, it's a very lush kind of Exhortation to his fellow man, you know to save yourself You know, and I'll you know, I just I don't know just I was just wondering your thoughts on that I think this is idea of It's comparable maybe to the bodhisattva. There's something of the eastern traditions where and this goes back to play-doh, right? When people forget that the allegory of the cave is a is a dialectical story The person in the cave leaves sees the truth and comes back Right in the allegory of the cave the guy comes back to the people in the cave um That image I think made an indelible impression upon many many people and so poymandres and And it's a pity that The text you mentioned, right? We it's so fragmentary that it's hard to piece together all that's going on there I think it's the longest text in nakamadi actually zostrianos Yeah, I think the idea is that If you find the truth and the truth really Provides salvation for you You can't keep it hidden. You you reveal it you you try to use it to save people and Yeah, the zostrianos text does strike me as a little more elitist, but it's not like poymandres is like kind of people He calls them like drunkards and sleepwalkers and He's not exactly like easy on them as as it goes but um Yeah, I mean same as jesus and other kinds of these characters Um the idea right is that they discover some truths and they and they try to they try to save us with it um At some level, I guess I like that story so much more than I found the truth and now let me initiate The tiny elect few who will be worthy of the the message and this is a This is a thing about as a terrorism that I really dislike is the elitism that comes with it that That I found the message and now let me do the work of it, you know of initiating the tiny few of people that Are worthy of the message or whatever I like poymandres in this way because poymandres Plato too, right? He comes like the cave is all of us. We're all in the cave He comes like to all of us. Um zostrianos to to some degree, although it's a little more uh elect based but I am I think that the idea of when you find a breakthrough truth or spiritual truth or whatever um Yeah, the share it, you know, you you you can't uh, you can't uh, you can't hide a light in a bushel And I like the idea of of getting it out there and I do think that That's what I like about At least my romantic view of ancient alexandria was that you had 15 20 different groups of people out there and the streets of alexandria being like we found it Right, whether it's the stoics with their apothea Whether it's the way of hermes whether it was the various schools and so-called Gnosticism or is the various schools and so-called christianity You know the jews, uh all these different groups um What a sight it must have been You know, uh, we talk about the market we we talk about the marketplace of ideas But you know, it's nothing like it must have been back then It must have been a positive this cornucopia Of of people competing and can you imagine a world where there's a hermeticist and a in a gnostic and uh, you know, the middle platonic philosophers looking down their nose at everyone and um, it must have just been um You know for the hoi paloi for the illiterate masses which you know, most people were um You know, it must have been because they were shopping, right? Everyone was shopping Everyone was shopping. No one's going to get left out of salvation Everyone was shopping And can you imagine being that illiterate shopper? and You can't read these books. You can't read what they said, you know and to have to go to the marketplace and Be like, have you heard about the way of Hermes have you heard about the way of valentina's have you heard about the way of Jesus have you heard about the way of of seith? um Man, it must have been Uh an exciting time But also fraught. I mean how to hate to have made so many decisions, but um, but yeah, I I think that That You can hurt you you can esotericize your way out of a job Um, which is what I don't want to do Um, you can you can answer I mean if you're if you're if your truth that you discovered is so secret and so powerful And so special that only you and three of your friends will ever be worthy of learning about it um Probably you're gonna esotericize your way out of a job And I do like zestrianus and pymandres where they Uh, they take these extreme revelations And they say no, we're gonna put them out there and we're gonna see who bites We're gonna see who believes it. We're gonna see if they want to join our group or uh community or or what have you And I find that to be just like a terribly fascinating glimpse into the world that must have been the um The the frothing milk of ancient alexandrian intellectual and spiritual life Well said I couldn't say it better myself. Um Yeah, I mean that brings up an amazing point. Um, you you can't really imagine like those neoplatonic philosophers and like say unabias Like you're not going to imagine like uh, ammonia socas like and the agora like You know shouting out his ideas of uh You know to the the whole marketplace, you know, he's he's more like with his own Oh, oh, yeah, no circle, you know, oh, right. Money suckers is by himself his own circle, perhaps But I'm sure money the suckers had his hype man Yeah You know, everybody has to have a hype man. And so, you know, height. Yeah, ammonia socas have his guy out Being like have you heard about ammonia socas and You know, uh, he knows the thing and and of course, you know platinus Platinus, yeah, for sure. Yeah platinus and maybe even or did origin study under money suckers Um, I can't remember who exactly he studied under. I know he didn't study under one of those guys Yeah, but you you don't know Sorry, yeah, but again like uh Everyone has a height man. And so I think that uh Again the Whoever wrote the corpus of medica may have not been the guy may have not been the height man, but I'm sure they had some guy You know hawking I was thinking like marxist all the school to marxism all hawking papers I imagine it was uh Uh, you read you read you read this Yeah, you know out there reading the corpus of medica one Yeah, I like the uh the analogy dylan burns tells about um He has this analogy where uh, you know, this the way the stephian literature kind of Transmitted it was kind of like those uh the satanic panic, you know, just getting it back to your channel Like I was like, hey, have you heard the true story about genesis? Have you heard uh, you read this, uh, really hot new deep cut called uh Uh the apocryphal of john or whatever Yeah, you know, it's like a trying to like get slayer Slayer records and sneaking into your room or something. Um Dr. Slips, this has been a pleasure. Thank you so much Of course, man. Where can people find you? Yeah, man. They can find me uh on most of the youtube, you know, I don't have a lot of other social media because it scares the hell out of me Uh, but uh, yeah, I'm on youtube. Uh, as uh under esoterica. That's sort of my My bag and and folks can also find me on on my patreon and You know support the work I try to do of providing, you know, again I'm trying not to esoteric as of myself out of a job. It's by the name of my channel It's all about trying to make esoteric accessible Uh in a way that scholarly and rigorous uh and fun. I mean, I also try to have fun with this stuff So, uh, yeah folks can find me there Adjusting sledge it's been a pleasure Take care. Of course, man. Thank you