Tag Archives: hermeneuticon

Hermeneuticon

Hermeneuticon and the Hermeneuticon Wiki are some of the original site enhancements I’d planned to develop when I took over the Hermetic Library site. Hermeneuticon and projects hosted there are intended to enhance the content of the main library site by offering a place for the kind of additional information I personally find interesting and useful, and, of course, hope you will also. Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons this companion site has lain fallow for far too long …

Recently I’ve renovated the Hermeneuticon site a bit, but also completely converted the Hermeneuticon Wiki to a new wiki engine and also more closely integrated it with the library.

 

Hermeneuticon

The Hermeneuticon site name is inspired by and a play on the folk etymology of “hermeneutics”, which suggests that the origin comes from Hermes, the messenger of the gods in Greek religion; because of the adianoeta and allegory with Hermes Trismegistus, to whom the terms hermeticism and hermetic are related.

I wanted to have a place where I could develop projects that added value to and encourage engagement with the texts offered by the main library site through sharing metadata, including hermeneutics, cross-indexes, cross-references, annotations and other marginalia; primarily through a wiki where such information could be collectively developed, but also through other projects as well.

There are currently five projects living at Hermeneuticon, four of which are being built on the wiki, including the Hermeneuticon Wiki itself but also Metadata, Concordance and Serapeion project spaces. A fifth project, the Aleister Crowley Reference Desk, is a separate development intended as a resource and generator for useful information, especially concordance tables and tag clouds, but is still in a very early alpha state though it may see itself renovated soon as well to support the rest of the projects, especially the Concordance Project for which it was originally developed.

 

Hermeneuticon Wiki

The primary tool at Hermeneuticon is the wiki.

The Hermeneuticon Wiki root namespace is intended to develop entries on key terms found across the entire main library site, similar to what one might expect from a wiki-based encyclopedia. However, articles in the primary namespace are intended to be unique resources, not copies or duplicates of another encyclopedia. If there are other articles or references, instead of importing them there, as one might on some other wiki, one will simply add them to one of the reference link lists toward the end of the article. However, if the material in another resource is of particular interest, one should consider quoting from those resources in an appropriately fair use citation.

There are some initial examples of articles and you can take a gander at all the pages and namespaces via the sitemap. Mostly there are some stub articles, but there are a few just a little bit more filled out, such as the entry for Florence Farr, to give you an idea.

 

I especially want to point out to you today the way that the information from the Metadata Project at the wiki is now more fully integrated with the rest of the library. As I mentioned already, the idea of offering a place for metadata is to increase the breadth and depth of engagement with the texts on the site. I think an example will do much to demonstrate what I mean by all of this.

If you head over to the main library site, and for this example I’m looking at Liber Ararita, in the upper right corner of most pages are a few useful links, such as a site search tool (including a convenient way to add the Hermetic Library site search to your browser, by clicking on the ‘+’ mark, if your browser supports such things), a link which opens some helpful bookmarking links, and a ‘Metadata’ link.

Hermetic Library metadata link

Clicking on this Metadata link will open a window which is populated with information directly and dynamically pulled from the matching page on the wiki from the Metadata Project.

Hermetic Library - Hermeneuticon Wiki metadata window

 

I think you can see from this example the potential for adding useful hermeneutics, cross-indexes, cross-references, annotations and other marginalia that are not part of the text itself, but of interest to the student and researcher, to the site. On the whole, there are not many entries available yet, but if you have comments, questions, or suggestions about these things or the site in general, feel free to contact me via the librarian alias.

something something Aleister Crowley

 

I think the text is

“L.G.P. Ano 12, Sol em Balança

Não Posso Viver Sem Ti.
A outra “Boca de Infierno” (sic)
apanhar-me-á não será tão quente como a tua

Hisos

Tu Li Yu

Texto da carta de Aleister Crowley (famoso mago Inglês; 1875-1947), para a sua companheira “A Mulher Escarlate” simulando o suicidio na Boca do Inferno.

Esta carta foi publicada em jornais nacionais como o “Diário de Notícias” ou o “Notícias Ilustrado”, e estrangeiros, para credibilizar o sucedido, com a conivência do Poeta Fernando Pessoa e do Jornalista e Occultista Augusto Ferreira Gomes. Em Setembro de 1930, com o intuito de conhecer Fernando Pessoa, Aleister Crowley permanence em Lisboa Sintra e Estoril durante cerca de 20 dias.”

for which a messy translation attempt could be

“L.G.P. Year 12, Sun in Libra

I Can not Live Without Thee
The other “Boca de Infierno” (sic)
catch me will not be as hot as your

Hisos

Tu Li Yu

Text of the letter of Aleister Crowley (famous magician English, 1875-1947), his companion for “The Scarlet Woman” simulating the suicide in the Mouth of Hell.

This letter was published in national newspapers as the “Daily News” or the “Illustrated News”, and foreign credibility to what happened with the connivance of the poet Fernando Pessoa and the Journalist and Occultist Augusto Ferreira Gomes. In September 1930, in order to meet Fernando Pessoa, Aleister Crowley remains in Lisbon, Sintra and Estoril for about 20 days.”

I’ve added a stub for Fernando Pessoa to the Hermeneuticon Wiki and now added a link to this image there.

 

The Hermetic Library visual pool is a visual scavenger hunt for images of a living Western Esoteric Tradition.

Images of your ritual or ritual space, images of sigils or tools, showing off your own library or special volume from the restricted stacks, sacred spaces and places, esoteric artefacts and installations, inspired paintings and people – these and much more are part of the culture and practice of magick.

Dr. Kenneth Anger I

Dr. KENNETH ANGER I
Dr. KENNETH ANGER I, originally uploaded by Mark Berry.

 

“‘Don’t disobey me. Do as I say and don’t talk back!’ waspishly screamed the author, artist and filmmaker, waving his fist and practically foaming at the mouth. This was not really an interview; this was more like a strange brief encounter with Kenneth Anger. ‘I can be charming,’ he explained staring straight into my eyes, ‘but I’m not going to be!’ This is a man whose volatile temperament is renowned and recently due to a rare medical condition hadn’t slept for six months. I had been warned though…'”

— Mark Berry in Bizarre Magazine

 

I’ve recently added a stub for Kenneth Anger to the Hermeneuticon Wiki and now added a link to this image there.

 

The Hermetic Library visual pool is a visual scavenger hunt for images of a living Western Esoteric Tradition.

Images of your ritual or ritual space, images of sigils or tools, showing off your own library or special volume from the restricted stacks, sacred spaces and places, esoteric artefacts and installations, inspired paintings and people – these and much more are part of the culture and practice of magick.

Charles Bradlaugh

Allan Bennet, writing as Ananda Maitriya, in The Law of Righteousness mentions Charles Bradlaugh.

“And so it is that to us of the Buddhist Faith the character of such a man as the great English politician, Charles Bradlaugh, who looked for no future past the gates of Death, and yet worked gloriously for liberty and good, is grander by far and nobler than that of any greatest martyr of the Theistic creeds, who, if they have silently endured torture and persecution, or gone singing to the flames, have been upheld and inspired by what to us seems only selfishness:—the hope that they might gain a life of bliss beyond.” [via]

 

Charles Bradlaugh is also mentioned in a significant number of Aleister Crowley documents in the collection, for example this selection:

“It is not possible to find a common ground for intellectual discussion between Charles Bradlaugh and Charles Sprugeon, because Bradlaugh bases everything upon the mind, and Spurgeon merely remarks ‘The carnal mind is enmity against God.'”

Liber DCCCLXXXVIII The Gospel According to St. Bernard Shaw

“May we submit in reply to this firstly that there are quite a number of people (from Laotze to Charles Bradlaugh) who are quite sound about Barabbas and the Life Force, yet who have not know or felt what they are here asserted to have done? Nor do the vast majority of students of economics (and the rest of it) find that their practical conclusions are virtually those either of Jesus or of Mr. Bernard Shaw.”

Liber DCCCLXXXVIII The Gospel According to St. Bernard Shaw

“Mr. Shaw knows this as well as I do. He thought (I doubt not) to make his preface a subtle sidelong thrust at Jesus; but the weapon will turn in his hand. He had better have trusted to the broadsword of Bradlaugh.”

Liber DCCCLXXXVIII The Gospel According to St. Bernard Shaw

“The anti-Christians were in fact as prone to split up into sects as the non-conformists themselves. Bradlaugh’s personality was big enough to enable him to keep any differences that he may have had with Huxley in the background, but the successors of these paladins were degenerate.”

The Confessions of Aleister Crowley, Chapter 60

“The system of social snobbery was to continue concurrently with the boast of the triumph of democratic principles. In every subject which might give rise to controversy there was a tacit agreement not to tell the truth. The people who persecuted Byron, Shelley, Darwin, Bradlaugh and Foote smiled amiably at the much more outspoken blasphemies of Bernard Shaw. The hollowness of Christianity and feudalism became shameless. No one dared to defend his convictions, if indeed he possessed them.”

The Confessions of Aleister Crowley, Chapter 75

“Theism! The convolution with the cause-idea lying too close to the convolution with the fear-idea. And imagination at work on the nexus! About 24 mu between Charles Bradlaugh and Cardinal Newman!”

From the diaries of Aleister Crowley as quoted in The Soul-Hunter

“What the man in the street means by Atheist is the militant Atheist, Bradlaugh or Foote; and it is a singular characteristic of the Odium Theologicum that, instead of arguing soberly concerning the proposition, which those worthies put forward, they always try to drag the red herring of morality across the track.”

Concerning Blasphemy in General and the Rites of Eleusis in General

 

Charles Bradlaugh is also mentioned in a number of other documents in the collection, such as this example:

“‘Christ Scientist’ and Jesus the Mahatma are preached by people whom Peter would have struck dead as worse infidels than Simon Magus; and the Atonement; is preached by Baptist and Congregationalist ministers whose views of the miracles are those of Ingersoll and Bradlaugh.”

Preface to Androcles and the Lion by George Bernard Shaw, on which Aleister Crowley is commenting in Liber DCCCLXXXVIII The Gospel According to St. Bernard Shaw

 

You can find a lot of other references on the site to Charles Bradlaugh through a simple site search such as: Bradlaugh site:hermetic.com

 

And, recently, a number of additional books by Charles Bradlaugh have been made available via Project Gutenberg. A couple of the newest works to be added there are:

You can find a full listing of the works of Charles Bradlaugh available at Project Gutenberg at Books by Bradlaugh, Charles (sorted by popularity)

 

I’ve gone ahead and created a stub entry for Charles Bradlaugh with this information in the Hermeneuticon wiki. You can help expand that article by going to the site and adding relevant information.