A historical and clinical test of novelty: Can Psychiatry Renovate Itself? Enactive psychiatry presents itself as a solution to psychiatry’s integration problem: how physiological, experiential, social, and existential processes can belong to one coherent account of mental disorder. This essay argues that much of its conceptual material has identifiable predecessors in systems theory, phenomenology, philosophical … Continue reading Enactive Psychiatry: Old Wine, New Bottle—or a Better Vessel?
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Context Without Content: BodyMind Medicine and Magick
From Higher Occult Knowledge to the Traumatized Body For centuries, occult traditions have promised access to knowledge that remains unavailable to ordinary consciousness. It has been called gnosis, higher knowledge, secret wisdom, spiritual perception, clairvoyance, initiation, or the recovery of dormant human faculties. The terminology changes from one period to another, yet the basic structure … Continue reading Context Without Content: BodyMind Medicine and Magick
How a Myth Is Born: The Comte de Saint-Germain and the Machinery of Belief
A case study in narrative inflation, retroactive heroization, and the making of a modern god: read through the lens of the Inner Laboratory. Somewhere in eighteenth-century Europe, a well-dressed, extravagantly gifted man moved through the courts of Paris, Vienna and St. Petersburg, speaking a dozen languages, composing music, dabbling in chemistry, and letting slip, with … Continue reading How a Myth Is Born: The Comte de Saint-Germain and the Machinery of Belief
The Grammar of the Transpersonal
From observing consciousness contents to awe: a working overview Notes, prepared alongside our book Het Innerlijke Laboratorium/The Inner Laboratory (in preparation) Jan M. Keppel Hesselink https://www.youtube.com/@HetInnerlijkeLaboratorium 1. Starting point: the book's own trajectory The book's method begins from a simple, almost clinical act: learning to observe the contents of consciousness (thoughts, emotions, body signals, imagery) … Continue reading The Grammar of the Transpersonal
The Magickal Rite of the Restored Waters
Concerning the Purpose of this Operation This operation is to be performed when the Soul Mirror has shown a deficiency of the Water Element in the character of the operator. It is intended to call forth, strengthen, and internalize those virtues belonging to Water: receptivity, connection, softness without weakness, adaptability without loss of form, feeling … Continue reading The Magickal Rite of the Restored Waters
Madame de Salzmann op honderdjarige leeftijd: aandacht, automatisme en het ontstaan van innerlijke vrijheid
Jeanne de Salzmann werd geboren in 1889, ontmoette G. I. Gurdjieff in 1919 en bleef zijn naaste leerlinge tot zijn dood in 1949. Daarna gaf zij leiding aan de internationale voortzetting van zijn werk, tot haar eigen overlijden in 1990, op 101-jarige leeftijd. In de opnamen die hier worden besproken, zien we dus niet zomaar … Continue reading Madame de Salzmann op honderdjarige leeftijd: aandacht, automatisme en het ontstaan van innerlijke vrijheid
Can ancient magic still mean something in the twenty-first century?
In this experimental conversation, we explore whether old magical traditions contain a practical structure that can still be relevant today, once we strip away the archaic language, supernatural claims and historical cosmologies. https://youtu.be/Pwkavv_dYac?si=rRDj1OT_uSATQD5g This is a pilot dialogue for The Inner Laboratory, a project that approaches esoteric traditions as methods of inner investigation. Rather than … Continue reading Can ancient magic still mean something in the twenty-first century?
The Process of Sigilization an Undine Water Sigil of Sachiel, the formule and the evocation
Sigilization as a Process A sigil does not always begin as a finished symbol. More often, it emerges gradually through concentration, research, experimentation and repeated drawing. The final sign is only the visible result of a longer movement in which intention, imagination and gesture are brought together. There are several established ways of creating a … Continue reading The Process of Sigilization an Undine Water Sigil of Sachiel, the formule and the evocation
The Oldest Syllabus: The Mithras Liturgy and the Ancient Object of Esoteric Psychology
What I mean by esoteric psychology Readers of this blog know that I have been circling one idea for years, and lately naming it openly: esoteric psychology. The name needs a word of explanation, because it does not mean what it seems to mean. It is not the psychology of people who believe strange things. … Continue reading The Oldest Syllabus: The Mithras Liturgy and the Ancient Object of Esoteric Psychology
What is Esoterism Really? The Pendulum and the Commuter: Why Nobody Can Define Esotericism, and Why That Is Good News
For forty years, scholars have tried to define esotericism. Faivre proposed a form of thought with six components. Hanegraaff traced a history of rejected knowledge. Bergunder called the word an empty signifier that means whatever a given era needs it to mean. Asprem broke the whole thing down into cognitive building blocks. Each definition corrected … Continue reading What is Esoterism Really? The Pendulum and the Commuter: Why Nobody Can Define Esotericism, and Why That Is Good News