As Below, So Above | James Lindsay

The Secret Religions of the West, Session 3 of 3

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.