1. I am familiar with the work of M. Garver, and I do think that he is a bright spot. He has always and consistently been honest and forthcoming about his traditions, and I wholeheartedly support the work he is doing with the EGA.

2. I wanted to reiterate that I do consider myself a Gnostic; the word “Gnostic” isn’t problematic to me, it’s the word “Gnosticism.” I base this understanding largely on modern scholarship.

3. I appreciate your musings on whether the work as it stands at present could be expanded– I indubitably agree. However, at the moment, I don’t have anything more to say. Perhaps there will be future editions or sequels, and should this be the case, input from readers will of course contribute greatly to its contents.

Thanks again!

VT was of Baltic German descent. Thus familiar with Luthern German culture as well as the predominant culture of the area– that of Orthodox Russians. Orthodoxy, especially Russian, has a very different mind set than that of western Europe and the US. Without going into all of the details, let me say that, while this is not strictly speaking true, it may be thought of as something like Tibetan Buddhism. It’s been my experience that most people know more about Buddhism than about the ancient lineage of Eastern Orthodoxy. Which is the form of Christianity followed by more than 250 million modern adherents. And no, it was never the same as Roman Catholicism. The Latin churches and the Greek churches were once in communion, but the Orthodox were always independent.

VT was a student of Rudolph Steiner. Steiner is himself a fascinating character, who broke with the Theosophists because he thought their emphasis on Buddist/Hindu concepts was inappropriate for the west. In addition, he disagreed with their dismissal of Christianity. Both Helena Blavatsky (founder of Theosophy) and Steiner were first class mediums as well as terrific scholars of esoteric traditions. The problem with the received material is that the rest of us have to take their word for it. If we do, we’re back to the same problem that people have with some Christian doctrines. That because an authority says so, you’re required to believe it. In contrast to experiencing something directly and thus understanding it.

Because Tomberg converted to Roman Catholicism, he has a certain cachet among intellectual Catholics. He wanted to convert to Orthodoxy. But the priest with whom VT spoke was very uncomfortable with the tarot material. An irony, I think, since I find it possible to connect both Tarot and Kabbalah with Orthodox icons and especially with the idea of theosis– the deification, not only of humanity, but of all creation. IMHO, Tomberg wanted to convert so as to channel some of the potential of esotericsm back into Christianity. BTW, he wrote several other books and pamphlets. The Theosophical Society bookstores are good places to find them or to order them.

I found your site during a search for Hermeticism ( I was looking to verify something.) I totally agree that Hermeticism is indeed compatable with Hermetic doctrine. Which early Christians, such as Clement of Alexandria, who were well-educated in Greek philosophy, would have taken for granted. In fact, they explained Christianity to learned non-believers by means of philosophic concepts. Which IMO is why there is a kind of “Bible code” in theNT. If you’ve never heard of that, look up the name John Michell. Also Frederick Bligh Bond. For some contemporary work on Christian gematria, find the books of Kieren Barry and especially that of David Fideler. Not to mention the many Christian alchemists over the centuries. Who in effect or in fact were Hermeticists.

BTW, the Hermetic material that helped kick start the Renaissance was from the Orthodox territory of Constantinople. Where the western Dark Ages never happened. When that eastern “Roman” empire finally fell in 1453, the escaping monastics and/or academics brought the Hermetic material to Florence, Italy.

http://www.herts.ac.uk/events/The-Francis-Bacon-Lecture-2012.cfm

“Aping Mankind: Neuromania, Darwinitis and the Misrepresentation of Mankind
Neuromania is based on the incorrect notion that human consciousness is identical with activity in the brain, that people are their brains, and that societies are best understood as collections of brains. While the brain is a necessary condition of every aspect of human consciousness, it is not a sufficient condition – which is why neuroscience, and the materialist philosophy upon which it is based, fails to capture the human person. Since the brain is an evolved organism, Neuromania leads to Darwinitis, the assumption that, since Darwin demonstrated the biological origins of the organism Homo sapiens, we should look to evolutionary theory to understand what we are now; that our biological roots explain our cultural leaves. In fact, we belong to a community of minds that has developed over the hundreds of thousands of years since we parted company from other primates.”

Tallis is a superb writer, I hope I can make this.

“The conclusion that ‘conscious states really are just neural states’ is based on a philosophical argument, the following philosophical argument ‘the material world is all that exists, therefore all phenomena can be explained by appealing to the material alone, an appeal to anything beyond the material is groundless necessarily’ – any scientist who accepts this position would have no business even discussing such a proposed relationship between neural and conscious states as for the empirical scientist there are only neural states to speak of.”

This suggests that the contents of consciousness are simply not amenable to *any* form of scientific enquiry- that they are necessarily outwith the domain of the scientist. This is not the case – e.g. it is possible to test the accuracy of a person’s memory for a list of words they have been shown- a simple example where some aspect of conscious representation is easily measurable. Or it is possible to ask people to rate the intensity of their emotional responses to unpleasant images. In both these cases it is possible to look for correlations between,say, the activity of particular brain regions or circuits (as measured with functional neuroimaging), and the aspect of consciousness being measured e.g. people who report greater emotional arousal may show greater activity in the amygdala, a brain structure implicated in fear. But of course I would accept that this such an approach is very tentative- clearly there is an enormous gulf between asking someone to rate how scary they find something, and having direct experiential access to their conscious world.

“So really from my point of view neuro-science isn’t explaining conscious behaviour at all, it is instead providing a rival, physicalist narrative which hopes to eliminate the need to appeal to a conscious mind ‘proper’.

There are individual neuroscientists who take the reductionist view that mental states are the same thing as physical states. Many do not, however, so this is not a driving agenda for the discipline. Probably it is generally true that there is more internal debate within disciplines than may be evident when seen from outside. There is now a whole strand of ‘consciousness science’ which absolutely acknowledges the reality of consciousness but seeks to uncover a biological and mathematical basis for it. This field is even more tentative than that outlined above, admittedly, but it shows that there is not a general rejection of consciousness per se among scientists.

Personally I would not talk about ‘rival’ narrative: to take again as an example the experience of fear- knowing more about the neurochemical processes relevant to the biology of fear in no way ‘explains away’ the experience of fear or the language, myths, symbols, rituals etc that people use to portray it, discuss it, explore it, confront it, etc. (Even if there were to be some mathematical model that precisely modelled people’s experiences, people would still be having experiences). Rather these things (the biology and the psychology of fear) are like two sides of the same coin- or more likely, two faces of some immensely complex polygon.

http://thehauntedshoreline.wordpress.com/

We have a discussion thread on ‘Gnostic Cosmology’ here – always great to have insights into what some traditional christians find perhaps too allegorical or mystical, but when properly coordinated, the Gnostic mythos correlates on all levels of human experience, and inspires our ultimate destiny towards Spirit.

http://www.theologyonline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=40004

Paul (freelight)