I was wondering why dont us Wizards engage in esoteric discussions.
I am not talking about religion per se, nor about hollow new age pseudo-mysticism, but about the many works scattered through the course of history dealing with the inner life of man in a metaphysical sense. This also includes fiction which deals with these ideas symbolically – such as the epics Homer, revered by the Neoplatonists.
These days philosophy, the love of wisdom, seems to concern itself solely with intellectual masturbation, completely oblivious to the fact that praxis were originally an integral part of it.
I suppose atheism plays a considerable role in this line of development, especially in the academic field, where the modern notion of "progress" have arrogantly seperated us from all matters relating to divinity, considering such things as barbaric non-sense, simply because the limited apparatus of science are unable to prove such things, and that faith supposedly stands in direct opposition to reason – and so, ironically, they put their faith in the many hypotheses of science, putting their restless fear of unknowingness to a standstill, for a little while, until this or that gets debunked tomorrow and they silently invest themselfes dogmatically to a new pet theory.
Moreso, philosophy seems to have taken a course in the direction of subjective inquiry, instead of objective reality, and this further puts it away from abstract spiritual matters, and closer to a psychological, socio-political critique. While there is nothing wrong with such matters, the general consensus of philosophy seems to have grown in such a light as to have become more bitter and melancholic in recent years.
Furthermore, I believe an exclusively exoteric interpretation of myth and religion has fueled the ignorance of its followers and consequently the aversion of its adversaries. The esoteric dimension have all together been overlooked.
The whole notion of mysticism is, to many people, considered to be an import from the east, even though such matters have clearly been present in western society. The revival of platonism in the renaissance is a testimony to this, as is the influence of the alchemical tradition on art. There is also the interresting theory that Francis Bacon, a supposed initiate of the rosicrucian order, was in fact Shakespeare.
In recent years, writings pertaining to esoteric matters, whether they be magical or mystical, ha
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