In the Esoteric Religion known as Hermeticism, there are a number of core principles of operation, perhaps most famously the Principle of Correspondence. It’s often worded “As above, so below,” but this is only half of the principle. The full expression is “As above, so below; as below, so above,” which outlines a snake eating its own tail as a driver of Hermetic alchemical magic. In his third lecture for the Mere Simulacrity conference in Phoenix, Arizona, in December 2022, James Lindsay explains how this principle is a driver of what he calls the “Secret Religions of the West” in an elucidating way. He contends that Karl Marx was the first to realize that the principle of correspondence must be applied from the bottom. Working on the world (as below) to change it (so above), and then the world (as above), changed, will socialize and condition people (so below) to accept the changes and make them “actual.” Marx called these two dynamics “praxis” and the “inversion of praxis,” but now we can expose them clearly for what they are. Join Lindsay to understand the mechanism behind the activism in many evils, including Marxism, Critical Race Theory, Queer Theory and feminism, Modern empire building, and even right-wing reactionary response, which plays its crucial role in this ongoing dynamic of destruction.
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Thank you, James. Watching all of these and learning a lot.
Thank you so much, James. You cannot know how helpful it is to learn from you the words and the ideas that link together everything that is trapping us more and more. Healthcare, in particular, has actually become deathcare with Canada's euthanasia frenzy (among other things).
The way you use a mix of bullet point short presentations and long (or very long, thank you!) immersive discussions is both didactic and inspiring.
I might not yet be able to stand up and speak up, but at least with the knowledge of the words and ideas that are used to bind us, I can at least avoid parroting and feeding the narrative. I can at least try to follow Solzhenitsyn's call to “Live Not by Lies.”
Again, thank you.