From What is Hermeticism? by Sebastian Niklaus.
Anyone who has not conquered personal pride in at least a preliminary way, is led by Hermeticism, not to genius but to charlatanry. This ambivalence is indicated in, for example, Arcanum I, “The Magician”.
The Magician is, on the one hand, a man of genius, strong in heart forces, who is carried with ease by contact with the spiritual world. However, he can also stand before us as a warning if, in avoiding the efforts of purification through an ease that is wrongly understood, we risk becoming a charlatan.
[Hermeticism] lives only from intuition and, without it, is dead. And it is this dead thing that was seen by the representatives of religious faith and of science, who were genuinely astounded at the fact that there are people who take it seriously. They see only scientific and religious “tinsel” or, at most, a weak faith that borrows crutches from science or, perhaps, a kindergarten science that has not yet learned to distinguish between what is believed and what is known. And with this they are not wrong; for without the invisible cement of intuition, Hermeticism is indeed only a random collection of disparate elements of science and religion. ~ Letter on XIX. Arcanum- Meditations on the Tarot]
It should be stressed that the pupil must never lose himself in speculations on the meaning of this or that. Such intellectualizing will only lead him away from the right path. He should look out on the world with keen, healthy senses and quickened power of observation, and then give himself up to the feeling that arises within him. He should not try to make out, through intellectual speculation, the meaning of things, but rather allow the things to disclose themselves.
Therefore symbols are in no way instruments of thought, but rather they are its guides and active masters, just as the “symbol of faith”, the Christian Creed, is not an instrument of thought, but rather a stellar constellation high above the head.” Letter on XVI Arcanum
Where is the pupil led to by the “stellar constellation of the Arcana”? Through the shaping of the astral body so that it attains “compatibility with the Sun”, the astral body can receive into itself the solar nature of the human being.
Thank you. This idea feels so important to me right now. I’ve given up on hermetic pursuits to prioritize prayer and twice daily centering prayer meditation to that end. Those practices are challenging enough to grapple with. I find it extremely difficult to know what the clarity of my state is to move to hermetic pursuits.