---
title: "Sam Block’s Path in Magic: Red Work Course, Solomonic Traditions, and Hermetic Wisdom"
url: https://staging13.perseusarcaneacademy.com/post/sam-blocks-path-in-magic-red-work-course-solomonic-traditions-and-hermetic-wisdom/
date: 2025-01-31
modified: 2026-07-03
lang: en
author: "Perseus Arcane Academy"
description: "Introduction I'm incredibly grateful to Sam for taking the time to answer my questions in such depth—over 10,000 words! His generosity in sharing his experiences, insights, and knowledge is truly..."
categories:
  - "Interviews"
  - "Western Traditions"
tags:
  - "Alchemy"
  - "Evocation"
  - "Hermetic"
  - "Magic"
  - "Solomonic"
image: https://staging13.perseusarcaneacademy.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/395px-The_Apparition_Gustave_Moreau_1876.jpg
word_count: 10166
---

# Sam Block’s Path in Magic: Red Work Course, Solomonic Traditions, and Hermetic Wisdom

## Introduction

I'm incredibly grateful to Sam for taking the time to answer my questions in such depth—over 10,000 words! His generosity in sharing his experiences, insights, and knowledge is truly appreciated.

Sam’s work is a treasure trove for anyone interested in magic, the Red Work Course, Solomonic traditions, and Hermeticism. If you enjoyed this conversation, I highly encourage you to visit his site and explore more of his writing there are numerous links as you work your way through this post.

If you found this post valuable, please consider sharing it with others who might appreciate it and let us know your thoughts in the comments at the end of this post.

Table of Contents

- Introduction- Background and Training- Solomonic Magic and Trithemius' Art of Drawing Spirits into Crystals (DSIC)- The Adocentyn Temple Almanac (TATA)- Greco-Egyptian Magic and the Greek Magical Papyri (PGM)- Classical Hermeticism- Personal Experiences and Insights

---

## Background and Training

- Information about the RWC:

https://digitalambler.com/about/red-work-course/

**PAA: Your interest in magic and the occult began at a young age, but you formally started your practice in 2011. Could you share what catalyzed this transition to formal practice?**

Basically, it was time for me to do something.  It was early on in 2011, so I was still pretty fresh out of college, I had broken up with my boyfriend and he had moved out so I was living on my own for a good while, and I felt like it was time to actually dive in deep beyond merely dabbling or keeping it as an academic curiosity.  As you noted, I was already interested in this stuff since childhood, on top of my older sister having long been a Tarot reader and astrologer and being able to pilfer all my older brother's pre-college hand-me-downs from when he was a high school neopagan, and in college I had picked up geomancy and gotten no small amount of experience and study in it, which exposed me to astrology, to Solomonic magic, to talismans and image magic, and so much more; with all the newfound time and income on my hands, I figured to put it to use and put myself to the Work.

**PAA: You chose to study the Red Work Course (RWC) under Fr. Rufus Opus (RO). What aspects of this course appealed to you, and how has it shaped your approach to Western esoteric traditions?**

I knew that, while I could have just picked up some books and given it all a whirl on my own, I would have done better in an actual class format, so I looked around at the time and tried to find some options.  After looking through my options and seeing what appealed to me, I was left with three choices: Jason Miller's "Strategic Sorcery", Chris Warnock's astrological magic courses, and RO's RWC.  They all had their pros and cons for me, and I couldn't really decide between them, so I busted out my divination kit and figured out which would benefit me the most.  The RWC came out on top, so that's what I went with—and I daresay it was indeed a pretty good choice.  I haven't gotten around to the other courses yet, but from what I hear, they're still very excellent options.

As for how it's shaped my approach to Western esoteric traditions, hm.  The RWC, although it provides a whole curriculum of magic on its own and enables one to do all sorts of thaumaturgical stuff, has (to me at any rate) a strongly theurgic focus which undergirds and underpins all that.  I'm no stranger to using magic for getting laid and getting paid (which, let's be honest, has always been the top reasons why people have ever used magic the whole world over), but as I've grown with and through the RWC stuff, all of that gets contextualized by a…"higher", more mystical approach to spirituality which can manifest as magic but for which magic is not itself the end goal.  I end up looking for a lot of that at times, and while trying to find how any given technique or system might be used for various ends, still try to keep in mind how it might serve my own bit of divine providence.

**PAA: Beyond the RWC, have you pursued other formal training or mentorships in the field of magic and spirituality?**

In Western esoteric stuff, not really.  The RWC was my sole focus for a good few years, although in the course of that I was exposed through books or friends to various other things, other traditions or miscellaneous adventures that ranged from ghosthunting to impromptu exorcisms to experiments with energy work and everything in between, but all of that was more informal hands-on stuff.  This isn't to say that I'm not studying under others, of course—orisha priesthood, for instance, is a lifelong commitment under my godfather's tutelage (and boundless, gracious patience for all my nonsense)—but that's separate from Western esoteric stuff.

**PAA: As a licensed facilitator of the RWC, how do you integrate your personal experiences into the curriculum when teaching new students?**

I don't, or at least, not all that much!  To my knowledge, RO has only ever licensed three people to carry on his RWC stuff, me being one of them.  The other two (both greatly-acclaimed magicians in their own rights), from what I've seen, took a more hands-on approach with cohorts and sessions of classes, incorporating St. Cyprian of Antioch stuff and yet other things besides to develop their own courses of magic that could be said to be based on the RWC or which at least incorporated it.  I took a different approach: I simply provide the original RWC files to people as I myself received them, not changing or removing anything, and give people a space to work on them as their own sort of independent practice, to kinda give people a sense of what taking the RWC was originally like; this includes maintaining a mailing list (and, nowadays, a Discord chatroom) for students to discuss what they're up to, what difficulties they're facing, what experiences they're going through, and the like.

However, there is one thing.  The only thing I've ever meaningfully added to the RWC files is essentially a long readme document that I have people read first, introducing what the RWC is, what the files are, and the like, but which also includes my recommended approach to them.  It's a fairly hefty document at about 40 pages, but it's basically my commentary and notes to RO's writing, providing some of my insights and ideas about how to go about implementing this stuff, why he might have said something that I'd personally disagree with, suggestions about materials or tools, and the like.  It's also a living document, so over time I might change what's in there or add new stuff to it based on feedback or questions from students as what might arise.

## Solomonic Magic and Trithemius' Art of Drawing Spirits into Crystals (DSIC)

https://digitalambler.com/2019/07/16/reviewing-the-trithemian-conjuration-recap-summary-variations/

**PAA: In your exploration of Solomonic magic, what insights have you gained from DSIC, and how have you adapted its methodologies for contemporary practice?**

Hm.  To be honest, DSIC has been pretty much my main and only exploration into Solomonic magic; it's what I used as part of the RWC (which uses DSIC as its one big ritual in various permutations), and it's basically what I've used ever since in general whenever I need to do conjuration (although some exceptions do apply, albeit rarely).  To be sure, in my own exploration of DSIC itself to flesh it out from something longer than a page-long grimoire entry into a whole thesis-length understanding, there's a whole lot that I certainly learned about the history and development of certain tools, certain prayer-based approaches, and the like.  I certainly wouldn't claim to be an expert on the history and development of Solomonic magic in general, but it is interesting to see how DSIC came about as a sort of late, barebones distillation of various Solomonic magical techniques and how we can work backwards in time to see how we got there.

**PAA: Reflecting on your experiences, how does the role of the scryer or medium impact the effectiveness of rituals based on Trithemius' techniques?**

Truth be told, I've only worked with a scryer, like, once or twice.  It hasn't been a big thing for me, not least because the vast majority of the spiritual work I do is independent without a community or cohort to work with.  In the very few times I've had the ability to work with a scryer, there was definitely some tension I had to work out because I was so used to doing both ritual work and visionary work at the same time, so learning how to give up one of those roles to focus more fully on the other was just part of it—although me and the scryer were in sync once I did.  Still, the ritual leader has to still be able to handle and perceive things on their own regardless if they're acting as the scryer or not; in that sense, I rather prefer to think of the scryer more as a sort of medium or channeller, much as one might have in a spiritist or spiritualist context, than just someone who sees things.

All that being said, I don't think having a scryer is an essential part of a ritual like DSIC.  There are lots of rituals out there that do demand a separate scryer–we see so many of them in the PGM for instance, especially calling for child scryers who are virgins and therefore inherently pure and don't need to go through lengthy or frustrating periods of abstinence and purification—but, while it might be great to have a scryer if you can find one to work with, you can also do just fine without one by learning to scry and chat on your own.

**PAA: Can you share any personal experiences or case studies where you've applied Trithemius' methods, and what outcomes or insights resulted from those practices?**

I hesitate to get into the nitty-gritty of something like this; in general, what happens in a conjuration or communion with some spirit or other is really just between me and them, although what might happen as a result of it might be expressed more or less publicly, or I might at times post some idea or other on my blog that comes about from it if I think it's useful for others to consider and chew on.  Suffice it to say that I wouldn't be where I am today if it weren't for the work I was doing with DSIC via the RWC.

**PAA: What ethical considerations do you take into account when summoning and communicating with spirits within the framework of Solomonic magic?**

I recall a quote from Winston Churchill about why he was so cordial and polite in his official response declaring a state of war after the Japanese attacks on British territories; his response was "when you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite".  While I'm not generally in the mood or mindset to kill anyone or anything, "it costs nothing to be polite" is an approach I take to everything I can—but politeness doesn't mean softness, either.

To be more direct about the question: it really depends on the situation at hand. I think everyone and everything, from humans and animals to ghosts and gods, deserves respect since everything has its own form of dignity, but that also goes hand-in-hand with the role and responsibility those things have in the cosmos.  With the proper mindset, every interaction we have with any sort of spirit (in a Solomonic setting or otherwise) should be done with respect for the spirit, not least because of their own role to play in the cosmic drama we're all actors in, but also because they're older than me and bigger than me, and that's something to be respectful of just as one might respect the ocean and its tides as well as its undertow, the canyon and its beauty as well as its sheer cliff drops, the thunderstorm and its nourishing rain as well as its fierce blazes of destructive lightning.

To me, the only issue arises when someone or something steps out of line, and when that happens, it's everyone's responsibility to help them get back in line and to support them that way as well as to ensure the order of themselves and of everything else.  Sometimes there are very valid reasons to be forceful with spirits, just how one might be forceful with wild animals who transgress their (and our) boundaries, or with human predators in a social setting.  There's a reason why bodhisattvas in Buddhism have both peaceful and wrathful forms, after all; even acting from a place of compassion and wisdom, sometimes an approach of "tough love" is the best tool to use to set things to right.  This, of course, isn't just a hammer to swing around wildly, but goes hand-in-hand with moral and ethical development to cultivate wisdom and insight to know when it is (and especially when it isn't) the proper tool to use.

## The Adocentyn Temple Almanac (TATA)

- Information about TATA:

https://digitalambler.com/tata/

- Mailing list: [https://groups.io/g/digitalambler-tata](https://groups.io/g/digitalambler-tata) 

**PAA: What inspired you to create TATA, and how does it serve the needs of modern practitioners?**

Originally, it was related to a project I had about calculating a sort of decanal calendar, where I would use roughly ten-day "weeks" for ritual stuff in line with Egyptian astrology for my Hermetic practice.  The idea of it would be simple: using a bit of math (courtesy of Jan Meeus' *Astronomical Algorithms*), I figured I would just calculate the position of the Sun and determine when it crosses a 10° boundary of the Zodiac (so 0° Aries, 10° Aries, 20° Aries, 0° Taurus, etc.), and use those roughly ten-day periods days for a repeating cycle of prayers.  Once I had that done (and discovered some inherent mess to astronomical calculations from unexpected sources in how elliptical orbits don't always play nicely with expectations), I also decided to calculate when the Moon started entering the lunar mansions, taking a cue from "Peter Stockinger's Traditional Astrology Weblog" where he offers his own lunar mansion ephemeris, since he provides them really conveniently but, alas, using Universal Time, which was always a hassle to convert, and gosh wouldn't it be nice if I could just calculate it on my own for my own time?  That was all back in early 2020, and it just snowballed from there into a much larger project where I tried calculating all sorts of planetary and stellar phenomena for ritual purposes, and here we are now.

As a magician and mystic, I think of timing as a resource like any other, like candles or incense or colors: there are good times to do things and less-good times to do them, and if you have the means for it, it pays off handsomely to make use of good times in the same way it pays to use the good incense or the fine ritual garb or that wand made to-spec, but if you only have cheap or no incense or need to do things on the spot, you can still make do if you make up for it in other ways.  (And yes, there are also cases when timing is an essential *sine qua non* of some rituals and practices, too!)  Being able to figure out good times to do stuff, whether strictly astrological or otherwise (and there are definitely non-astrological approaches to timing out there as well that are just as valid and useful as astrological ones!), is a super helpful skill for a whole lot of spiritual stuff out there, and that's where an almanac like this shines, informing us as to the qualities of a given time, what's going on, what it might overlap with, how we might consider it, and the like so that we can plan our own spiritual works to make the most of it all.

**PAA: What criteria did you use to determine which astronomical and astrological information would be most relevant for ritual planning across various esoteric traditions?**

I basically started from the ground up, going from the most obvious and easy-to-implement stuff to more nuanced and subtle (and correspondingly more difficult to implement) stuff.  Working from the decan and lunar mansion stuff mentioned before, it wasn't hard to figure out things like when the Sun or Moon or any other planet enters a new Zodiac sign, when a planet enters its exaltation degree, when a planet conjoins a fixed star, lunar phases (which can be determined by the aspects the Moon makes to the Sun), and the like, so basic astrological timing ideas.  This really forms the bulk of most timing considerations, especially those we see in medieval Islamic texts about Hermetic devotional works.  With the basics done, then I can see how I can make use of that data and reconsider it in more nuanced ways or build on it for more specific calculations, like when Mercury is in its exaltation degree *and* the Sun is rising above the horizon (which gives us the election from the classical Hermetic text *Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth*), or when a particular planet rules both the planetary day, planetary hour, and Zodiac sign rising on the eastern horizon (which is a great way to line up some basic timing rules into a solid approach of planetary magic).  The more detailed the rules, the more complex it is to develop (and often often takes more time to compute), so there is also a threshold beyond which I'm not comfortable adding in as a priority, especially if some timing consideration is so obscure and so little-used out there that maybe one person might ever use it or it's limited to one particular consecration for a limited purpose.  It really depends on what makes sense to develop and implement over time, but with a lot of the basics already implemented, I can free myself up more to work on more nuanced and detailed customizations over time (along with other infrastructure, backend, or formatting improvements that I also hope to make).

**PAA: Can you elaborate on the computational methods and tools employed to ensure the accuracy and personalization of the almanac's data?**

The high-level description for it all is that I have a program that takes in user information (e.g. location, planet and star lists, display preferences) and processes that information using the Swiss Ephemeris codebase (the same astrological software behind astro.com).  The biggest part of this is plotting, minute by minute, everything that happens across a whole year, figuring out where all the planets and stars are and how they move on their own and relative to each other, and then I process that data to produce other information like aspects or ritual windows.  There's a whole lot more that also gets determined (planetary hours for every day of the year, lunar month tabulation, custom event planning, etc.), but that's the gist of it.  Because I'm relying on the Swiss Ephemeris codebase and ephemeris data (which is rather well-regarded and is a gold standard based on NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory ephemerides), I'm basically assured of accuracy, but I still check against other ephemerides as I can, along with a personal review of what each user wants to make sure it makes sense and serves their needs.

**PAA: How has feedback from users influenced the development of TATA, and can you provide examples of significant updates or features added as a result?**

Oh, pretty much right from the get-go!  Once I realized that this was going to be a project I wanted to share with others and provide to others as a service, I put together a sort of survey questionnaire for people online to see what they might want.  That was back in summer 2020, and gave me a lot to chew on, both in terms of what people might have wanted as well as how many people wanted something, so not only could I make a feature list, but I could prioritize it.  Since then, the more people who request an almanac and get back to me about how they use it and what they might want in future versions (whether in private emails or in the TATA user group mailing list I have set up), the more things I can add onto my feature list, along with things I also just think about, come across, and figure might be a good thing to implement.  I can't promise I take care of every request (some I don't because of how limited but complex they are, some I don't for cultural or ethical reasons), but I try to do what I can in a way that still makes TATA a useful one-of-a-kind resource for as many people as possible.

## Greco-Egyptian Magic and the Greek Magical Papyri (PGM)

**PAA: In your work with the Greek Magical Papyri, how do you approach translating and contextualizing these ancient texts to make them accessible and practical for modern practitioners?**

Happily, I don't have to do all that much translating; that work's already been handled by the capable group headed by Hans Dieter Betz and also other translators since his time (I'm especially looking forward to the forthcoming work by Brian Alt).  At times, however, I do find it helpful to go back over the original texts and dig out a particular word or construction to get a better feel for what the connotations and implications of it are; even for the best of translations, there is no translating without some manner of interpreting, so being able to peer through that dark glass is always a skill I think everyone should pick up in some way or another.

Contextualizing, though, that's something that's incumbent on everyone, I think!  I like the idea that "there is no text without context", because every text is produced by an actual human being within their own culture, spirituality, worldview, and the like, but also for a particular intended audience as well.  A lot of people simply skip over that and read texts decontextualized, trying to read them where the reader is as if it was written for the reader, and while that is certainly *a* way to approach texts, I don't think it's helpful to do so from the get-go.  Rather, I argue, we should first try to understand the texts as they are in their own terms and in their own contexts, understanding not just what they say but how they say it and why in the minds of their original authors and as their original audiences would have read and understood them; only then can we actually have a chance at making a good takeaway from the text, something that might be contextualized for us but which still accounts for the context in which these texts were developed.  That goes for the PGM, sure, but also the classical Hermetic texts, medieval Solomonic grimoires, and pretty much anything else out there as well.  There's always stuff we can pick up and use, but we have to understand what came before us to understand where we are now; past is prologue, after all.

**PAA: The PGM is known for its syncretic nature. How do you navigate and integrate the diverse cultural elements present in these texts when reconstructing rituals today?**

Same as above, really: understand the context in which these texts were written, and then proceed accordingly.  Yes, the PGM came out of a heavily Greco-Egyptian context, no less Egyptian than it is Greek, and we definitely see syncretism in there—but we also see a lot of stuff that isn't so syncretic, a lot of stuff that is definitely more one than the other, so depending on the text in question (or even the specific ritual in question), "eclectic" might be a better description than "syncretic".  By understanding how these texts came about and appreciating not just what influences they had feeding into them but what social and religious licenses a given mage might have had towards engaging in a particular manner of work, seeing what relationships a given mage had (or had to cultivate) with individual spirits or whole traditions to get their work underway, 

**PAA: The PGM contains numerous "barbarous names" and *voces magicae*. How do you interpret their significance, and what strategies do you employ to understand and pronounce them effectively?**

It really depends on the context in which they're used.  Sometimes these are names of gods, sometimes these are relics of other languages (Egyptian especially) codified and garbled with age and use to become magical instructions or names of gods, sometimes these are just glossolalic invocations that the spirits understand regardless of human incomprehensibility.  There's a lot of good scholarship and analysis out there about a number of *voces magicae*; Ljuba Bortolani's *Magical Hymns from Roman Egypt* is a great resource that looks at the poetic and hymnic literature of the PGM and analyses them for influences and meaning, including the *voces magicae* that appear in there.  In general, I don't focus on their translation or fixed meaning in any human sense, but rather let them do their job as magical invocations that do their work regardless of what I might be saying, especially since the one and same *vox magica* might appear in various different contexts throughout the PGM.

As for pronouncing them, honestly, the best advice I can suggest is to just pick a system and stick with it.  Even in the texts, we see variation in spelling in ways that don't merely suggest typos but which suggest variant pronunciations, and we also know there were different dialects of Greek and Coptic being spoken back then that had their own twangs and drawls.  For modern practitioners, some people take a classical Attic pronunciation to Greek, others a Roman-era Koiné, others a Byzantine Koiné, and yet others a modern Greek pronunciation (especially for modern Greek speakers, since it's not like the language ever stopped being used).  For myself, I use a hybrid system that combines Roman-era Koiné with Sahidic Coptic to approximate what was likely used in Upper Egypt around Thebes (which is where a good chunk of PGM texts were recovered from), but that's just me.

**PAA: In your practice, how do you blend the theurgical aspects of the PGM with the philosophical principles of classical Hermeticism?**

There's a good number of theurgic rituals in the PGM, like the Mithras Liturgy of PGM IV or the works of PGM XIII, that often culminate with meeting a god (whether Aiōn or some personal god, or to form an intimate companion-relationship with a deity, etc.) or which have some sort of cosmic empowerment or elevation or the like.  These all great and I definitely recommend people checking them out—they're all more feasible and workable than one might expect, even today, making the appropriate concessions for resource availability—but they're also a lot to do, and not generally rituals to be done on a recurring basis.  For me, I like adopting and adapting smaller bits, like individual prayers and hymns, and incorporating them into my own Hermetic practice on a routine level, using them as building blocks to culminate in a long-term work of elevation and purification of the soul.  Of course, the thaumaturgic stuff in the PGM is also great; there's a lot of great ritual technology in there that can easily be adopted for all sorts of ends, whether thaumaturgic or theurgic, so giving that a good study also helps with my own personal practice for making offerings, making invocations, or the like, on top of keeping my own repertoire stocked with good rituals to do to keep things in my life stable and steady so I can flourish both in matters of this world as well as of higher ones.

## Classical Hermeticism

**PAA: In your article "The Difficulty of Principalizing the Way of Hermēs," you discuss challenges in defining Hermetic principles. How do you navigate these challenges in your personal practice?**

https://digitalambler.com/2020/05/15/the-difficulty-of-principalizing-the-way-of-hermes/

Largely by not bothering with the issue to begin with.  While a lot of people might expect or operate on whole systems of faith and mysticism being boiled down to a handful of cleanly-enumerated talking points, I don't think that that's a useful thing in general.  There are certainly a number of memorable lines from the Hermetic texts that provide useful ideas, like the end of CH XII "there is but one religion of God, to not be evil", but even these have lots of context that need to be unpacked to be understood appropriately  Summaries only work if you actually know what you're summarizing, after all; I don't consider a CliffNotes approach to be all that helpful to get into the meat of a thing when you could just directly get into the meat of a thing.  I personally prefer a holistic approach to the Hermetic texts, reading and contemplating them all one-by-one before putting them side-by-side and doing the same that way, following analysis with synthesis, and in that way I can have a better appreciation of all the motions and movements that happen at different levels to see what trends and highlights might arise from it all.

**PAA: You've explored the concept of Aiōn as the Divine Avatar of God. How does this influence your rituals and understanding of divine time?**

https://digitalambler.com/2024/06/16/hermetic-oneness-aion-as-the-divine-avatar-of-god/

I can't really say that it does!  Aiōn is the literal word for "eternity", sure, but it's also a god, and while this god is often considered in terms of time, I think doing so misses the point of what this god is.  Eternity is not itself a way to reckon time, nor does it mean "throughout time"; it's a notion of being *beyond* time entirely.  If you consider time as a line (a literal timeline), then if you extend that line infinitely in either direction, what you have is not eternity but a concept called sempiternity, which might be thought of as everlasting or infinity, but eternity is found nowhere on this timeline; it is off the line entirely.  In the Hermetic texts CH I and CH XI, we have this idea that time is not something that exists on its own as we might think of it today, but rather is a product of the movement of the cosmos; time is that which measures change, and so requires the notion of change (and things that can change) first before the very notion of time makes any sense.

In that light, when I consider "Aiōn as the divine avatar of God" in Hermeticism, this needs a bit to unpack.  In my understanding of the Hermetic texts, God is not *a* god, like how Hermēs or Isis or the Sun are gods.  The gods all certainly exist, but the Godhead in Hermeticism is beyond existence, and so cannot be called a god because the Godhead cannot be said to exist; all the same, we treat God *like* a god in some ways, almost like a sleight-of-hand trick, using worship and reverence as tools to develop a mystical devotion to help us reach divinity and divine oneness.  In this light, I like thinking of Aiōn as "God as if God were *a *god", which is something we see in some of the PGM texts (especially Aiōn-centric ones like the rituals of PGM XIII), where Aiōn is the god whom the gods worship, a god syncretized with the God of Abraham, the founding ruler of the cosmos and highest power in existence, and so on.  In a lot of ways, I also consider Aiōn to be akin to Polaris as the cosmic axis and thus the ruler of the cosmos who spins all things around itself, and in a way that also reflects the notion of Aiōn in a temporal sense, where if time measures change and motion is change, then the pole star itself never changes because it never moves yet itself allows for and produces change in all other things.

**PAA: In your studies, how do you interpret the relationship between Hermeticism and Neoplatonism, particularly concerning the nature of the divine and the cosmos?**

I often see people conflate Hermeticism with Neoplatonism or say that Neoplatonism is found in the Hermetic texts, but this has the timeline misunderstood.  Neoplatonism, as we understand it as starting with the works of Plotinus, Porphyry, and Iamblichus, was in large part being written slightly after the works of the Hermetic texts.  What we see in the Hermetic texts, rather, is not Neoplatonism but middle Platonism which also itself gave rise to later forms of Platonism like Neoplatonism.  However, I should also point out that Hermeticism is not itself wholly or only a Platonic thing; there's also a whole lot of Stoicism in the Hermetic texts, as well as bits of Aristotelianism at points, too.  Hermeticism is not beholden to any one of these philosophies, but dabbles in and draws on them to framework and structure its underlying mysticism; as such, if we were to consider Hermeticism to be just a kind of edgy Platonism (as some scholars still erroneously do today), it'd be awfully bad Platonism when you actually compare and contrast it.  This itself results from a misunderstanding of Hermeticism in it being called a "philosophy" and so expecting it to behave like Platonism, Stoicism, Aristotelianism, or the like; these are philosophies in the sense of them being systematic ways of understanding the world, something rigorous with axioms and systems of logic that codify and organize knowledge.  On the other hand, Hermeticism doesn't do this; it's much more about revelation and *gnōsis* than argumentation and systematization, which should make sense since it is a spiritual approach to mysticism.  It certainly makes use of philosophical ideas and structures, but it doesn't keep itself beholden to them.

As to the question itself, I'm actually a terrible person to answer that, since I'm not a big Platonist myself (I'm much more inclined to classical Stoic philosophy and have spent more time studying that instead); I know that there's an abundance of (middle) Platonic ideas in the Hermetic texts, but there's also a lot else going on, so there are often similarities but not exactly so.  What I can say, however, is that the Hermetic view of the cosmos is that it is all thoroughly divine.  Everything has its origin in God and comes about as an image of God in one sense or another.  Likewise, everything that happens does so ultimately by the will of God, whether directly or indirectly.  There is nothing that is not God, and being able to appreciate how all things come about and why helps us to better appreciate all these things, both the cosmos around us as well as us ourselves, thereby helping us to "know thyself" as well as to know God.  All this comes about to serve Hermeticism's own mystic goal in God: quoth CH VI, "only one road travels from here to the Beautiful [i.e. God]: reverence combined with knowledge".

**PAA: The Hermetic tradition emphasizes the pursuit of *gnōsis*. Can you share your personal experiences or practices that have been pivotal in your journey toward achieving this knowledge?**

While I've had this interest in Hermeticism for a long time—I first had my brush with the term in college as I was studying geomancy, which led me to getting my copy of Copenhaver's excellent  *Hermetica *translation—it was actually the RWC that got me really propelled towards it.  Sure, the RWC focuses on its own approach to Western esoteric stuff using late Renaissance/early modern ritual tech in the form of DSIC, but the underlying *ēthos *of it all is actually classical Hermeticism itself; right from the get-go, RO introduces the *Corpus Hermeticum* and the Armenian *Definitions of Hermēs Trismegistos to Asklēpios* to the student, and builds on those as a conceptual framework and foundation to ground and direct the theurgical, mystical stuff of the RWC as a whole, using angelic and planetary magic facilitated by Solomonic ritual as a vehicle.  It was in the course of working the RWC that really got me to such a point where what the Hermetic texts describe as *gnōsis *can be realized.

To clarify, I like using Wouter Hanegraaff's definition of *gnōsis* in a Hermetic context: this is specifically a sort of revelatory, non-discursive, experiential knowledge of truth itself.  It's not something you can merely think or believe your way to, not something you can reason out, not something you can read about and pick up from another; none of this is *gnōsis*, but rather, *gnōsis* is the actual experience of truth itself, something that you know in your very bones is true.  Like, imagine you're standing in front of a hot stove, and what happens if you try to make yourself touch the burner?  You can't, because you won't; you *know* that it's going to hurt, and we're made to live our lives to avoid that sort of pain.  Nobody needs to tell you that it's going to hurt, you just *know*, right?  That's that kind of deep, fundamentally-realized truth that *gnōsis* is.  CH IV talks about how the vision of God (i.e. an experience of *gnōsis*) "has a special property, it takes hold of those who have had the vision and draws them up, just as the magnet stone draws iron"; when you have an experience of *gnōsis*, something you just capital-K Know is capital-T True, you cannot deny it; indeed, you cannot live your life from then on in any way except to admit the truth of it, and so you live your life in a way that follows it, which leads to yet more Truth, which leads to yet more experiences of *gnōsis*, which ultimately leads to God.  It's a neverending journey, and no one single experience of *gnōsis* is ever going to be enough, but we keep having more, keep integrating and unpacking more, and keep ascending through the cosmos.  That's what the way of Hermēs is all about.

**PAA: Since you mentioned your own inclination to Stoicism, how does that shape your understanding of the Hermetic emphasis on *gnōsis* and revelation?**

For those ideas specifically, I don't think it does; just how Hermeticism would be considered "bad Platonism" if considered from a strictly Platonic light, so too would it be considered "bad Stoicism" if considered from a strictly Stoic light.  Again, Hermeticism isn't a philosophy like how these are philosophies, so it doesn't behave the same way or use the same tools to do the same things that proper philosophies like Platonism or Stoicism do.  Stoicism, like Platonism, is big on codifying and establishing knowledge in a systematic way starting with observation and the establishment of axioms through argumentation and logic, and while there is a spiritual component to this, that comes afterwards and is grounded in this sort of systematic argumentation.  Hermeticism is the opposite: the spirituality comes first, and then one can develop lines of argumentation to figure out its points.  *Gnōsis*, after all, isn't logical or reasonable; one can't argue one's way to it, but it has to be revealed and experienced for what it is.

That being said, there is a good deal that Stoicism helps with Hermeticism, and in many ways I find Stoicism to be a great "external" approach to implementing Hermeticism.  Stoicism's big idea is that happiness lies in living in accordance with nature, but to accept that means to develop one's own virtue in a way that permits such a way of life as well as to understand what nature is and does, and critically how to distinguish between things in our control and things which aren't.  Stoicism has a strongly deterministic pantheist worldview, which more-or-less accords with Hermeticism's view of the cosmos that the cosmos is fully dependent on and operates according to fate; what Hermeticism has that Stoicism doesn't is the idea of a God(head) that lies beyond the cosmos itself, while Stoicism considers the cosmos to be itself God.  While the "internal" aspect of Hermeticism diverges from Stoicism, the "external" aspect of it in the sense of how to reckon the world around us and how to live in accordance with it is strongly Stoic in many ways, and I find that having a background in Stoicism, both in terms of ethics as well as physics, is a really helpful boon to living a Hermetic life.

**PAA: How do you see the role of Hermeticism evolving in the modern esoteric landscape, and what contributions do you hope to make to its future development?**

Part of the work I think of myself doing is reframing what the word "Hermeticism" even refers to.  I understand the historical course that got us to a place where a lot of people use the term "Hermeticism" to refer to "Western esotericism" in some general sense, perhaps a little more limited to think of "Western ceremonial magic" involving some blend of Solomonic magic with a theurgic twist, Christian adaptations and appropriations of Jewish mysticism, alchemical symbolism, and the like; case in point, Franz Bardon's own *Initiation Into Hermetics* uses the term in exactly this sense without actually referring to pretty much anything substantiatively Hermetic in the sense of the Hermetic texts themselves (especially with mentally-deleterious garbage like the *Kybalion*).  I know this puts me in opposition to a lot of people out there, but I have a pretty narrow and strict notion of what qualifies for "Hermeticism" that I think would actually help people better appreciate this sort of esoteric mysticism as well as things that aren't in line with that; if "good fences make good neighbors", then coming to better understand what a thing *isn't* helps to better appreciate what a thing *is*.  There's lots of magic, astrology, alchemy, and the like out there, but what makes any of that "Hermetic" to me is that it has to fulfill or support the goals and aims laid out in the Hermetic texts, where to call something "Hermetic" isn't an aesthetic but an orientation.  Sure, the boundary of what is or isn't Hermeticism might be fuzzy at points, but there is still a boundary.

In that light, what I like to think of myself as doing is not (merely) playing the role of "Truth coming from the well armed with her whip to chastise humanity" to reframe the understanding of the label "Hermeticism" along a different axis than a lot of people out there are used to, but to show people that Hermeticism isn't just some dry or academic thing at all; rather, that it's a profoundly useful, practical, and livable approach to mysticism and spirituality that goes well beyond making tinctures or waving wands (even though it can certainly make use of that).  There's an actual character to Hermeticism, an actual sense of what it is and does that I don't think a lot of people out there realize, and actually taking such a path I think would help the spiritual lives of esoterically-minded individuals and the world in general as medicine does the body.  With us nowadays having more access to more Hermetic texts than ever (the Nag Hammadi discovery was only last century, and several new collections of Hermetic texts have been recovered since then!) as well as better and more profound scholarly understanding of where these texts arose from (and thus what the core of Hermeticism actually is and how it plays out), we're all better-positioned than ever before to take advantage of it—but people have to be aware of it to begin with and to accept it for what it is, rather than try to fold it from the get-go into mistaken, misunderstood, and outdated ways of thinking about it.

**PAA: I could not help noticing your strong views about the Kybalion, since mention of this book seems to draw some passionate responses.  Would you like to share more about your views in regard to this work?**

https://digitalambler.com/2023/07/07/psa-faq-the-kybalion-is-not-a-hermetic-text/

Would I ever (and definitely more than a number of people might)!  I have two big issues with the Kybalion, the first and more important one being that it claims that it's a Hermetic text when it's nothing of the sort.  It's a great example of appropriation, where its author, William Walker Atkinson, a professional salesman and a proponent of New Thought, adopted many pen names and personas to market and proclaim New Thought stuff in the early 20th century, and did whatever he could to spread and sell New Thought.  One such work of this ended up being the Kybalion, where he relied on the late understanding of "Hermeticism" to refer to anything vaguely esoteric without any connection of substance, fleshed out some popular myths of Hermēs Trismegistos and Hermeticism, and couched his own New Thought stuff as ancient Egyptian mysteries hidden away by secret masters until 1908 when it was graciously published for mass marketing and consumption.  However, despite how much it markets and claims itself to be Hermeticism, when you actually look at the content of it and compare it to the actual Hermetic texts, there's really nothing Hermetic about it at all; it's entirely devoid of meaningful mysticism, devotion, and reverence, and is at times not just non-Hermetic but anti-Hermetic with a strong anti-gnostic viewpoint, denying that we can ever know God and that there is no ultimate salvation for the soul.

Beyond that, though, it's also just a really crappy book.  Between its constant self-contradiction, lack of cohesion, bad science, wrong history, and outright manipulation of the reader through persuasive rhetoric to convince them that it's worth more than it is, it also actively teaches someone to just rub dirt in their problems and to think things off while ignoring anything actively harmful in their life. Because of how it's written, it's all too easy to gloss over how messed up it actually is, but also because of how much it perpetuates the same-old same-old, all too many people out there also just don't care about that, either—and neither of those things are great!  As someone in a reading group I was leading about the Kybalion said, "it is, quite possibly, the greatest example of capitalism's vision of spirituality: a shallow, materialistic, perennialist, and exploitative monstrosity capitalizing (pun intended) on the facade of ancient wisdom to sell more books and rope in as many students (read: customers, clients, victims) as possible".  It's just bad esotericism, and even if you wanted to turn to it as just a self-help book, you'd do better by getting an actual book on psychology instead.  There was better stuff already available in 1908 when the Kybalion was first published, and there's absolutely been better stuff published in the almost 120 years since; we would all do well to just drop the damn thing.

## Personal Experiences and Insights

**PAA: Throughout your journey, what have been some of the most transformative experiences that have shaped your approach to magic and spirituality?**

Gosh, it's hard to reckon them all.  Some were definitely larger deals than others, like my first conjuration of the angel of the eighth sphere presiding over the fixed stars or my orisha priesthood initiation; others were small but no less momentous, like meeting an alchemist standing by the wall at a furry party one winter or joining some Yahoo! Group mailing list back in the day.  There've also been things that I geared up for and, frankly, flopped, with not everything being as flashy as I had hoped or even all that important afterwards.  It's hard to determine any sort of pattern as to what ends up being meaningful or having a lasting impact, except that life as a whole seems to flow from event to event that brings about more and more awe, more and more opportunity.  I think that, done right, when one is in tune with one's own providence and destiny, all of life is one whole, singularly transformative experience; it's when we get waylaid or misled that we often get stuck or find ourselves sticking to something we shouldn't.

**PAA: How do you balance scholarly research with experiential practice in your work, and how has this balance evolved over time?**

Ultimately, it all has to be about the Work, doesn't it?  We don't call it the "Study", after all, but the "Work"; it all has to be experiential in the end.  That said, I do think that study is a huge part of this, because none of us are ever that old, that experienced, that well-learned, that well-traveled to know everything about everything, or even a whole lot about anything in particular; we're all always learning, and while experiments lead to experience which is definitely a valid and critically useful form of learning, there's also just a whole lot out there that's already been done, or which has already been evaluated to determine whether something is a good idea or not or whether something makes sense at all or not.  We don't need to reinvent the wheel every time we try something; we can (and should!) build on the bones of our forebears, fill ourselves with the breath of those who have gone before us, and realize that scholarly literature is so vitally and crucially helpful to us in our own spiritual work precisely because it can help inform us in ways that experience alone may not, or which experience alone without the proper context can lead us astray.  It's like, imagine seeing a painting in a museum: you might look at it and come away with some understanding of it and thinking that that's that, but someone who has an idea of the life of the painter, what they were going through when they were painting it, and the like will have a much more profound (and likely more on-target) understanding that other people might miss.  Again, "there is no text without context", and scholarly research and study helps provide our traditions and work with that very context upon which we can build.  Sure, it can certainly happen that scholars miss the point or get things wrong, and scholarship about many things is always developing and refining itself, but working from that is still a boon and a help that should never be overlooked or underestimated.

**PAA: What challenges have you encountered in your personal spiritual journey, and what strategies have you employed to overcome them?**

What, and expose all my vulnerabilities to my enemies and detractors out there?  I kid, of course, but it is hard to think about things in terms of this as "challenges" retrospectively when I see so much of what's happened, whether harsh or gentle, as just part of the process of it all.  Still, there are a few things, and the biggest one is discipline, especially in the face of trying to live a life as a human being in the world with a job and mortgage and cats and people while also trying to do what I do spiritually.  We all deserve self-care, sure, and sometimes that might extend into sleeping in on the weekends or the like, but it's also just so easy to slip up and slide down a hill of "I don't have to do as much" or "I can just do it tomorrow".  Sometimes there are real reasons to put things off or reschedule, but it's a real risk to just do that as an indulgence to oneself; motivation is great to get you started, but discipline is what keeps you going, and developing and maintaining discipline is a never ending fight, the solution to which is to just keep doing it, come what may.

Beyond that, I suppose I have problems a lot of people might have in one sense or another: difficulty integrating this element or that planet (resolved by finding my own balance and relationship with it), stubbornness in accepting certain messages from spirits (resolved by humility and openness with the spirits along with being hit on the head enough to learn that they typically know what's what), issues with other people in my spiritual communities (resolved by learning what I'm comfortable with and what my principles are and standing by them), and the like.  I suppose, when thinking of it that way, the trend there is that so many of my issues stem from a lack of awareness or an ignorance about myself, and so coming to learn more about myself, how I operate best, what my needs are, what my relationships should be, and the like—in their fullness as they are, not in my limitedness as I might only think of them—is what resolves them.  Those are all problems that have solutions, since they're in my power to solve; anything else is often something I just have to live with, a predicament that I'm not in control of, so learning how to differentiate problems from predicaments is also a useful skill and then to learn how to live my life accordingly.

**PAA: As a practitioner who integrates various esoteric traditions, how do you approach the ethical considerations of blending different spiritual systems?**

The biggest idea here, I think, is that not everything needs to be blended, nor does any one system have to lay claim to others, nor does any one system need to be universal (regardless whether it claims to be or not, as many do in one sense or another).  It's perfectly fine and (looking across the history of the world) very much the norm to engage in multiple practices separately, giving to them each their due in their own context without needing to bring multiple of them together.  While I myself as a human being might holistically be developed by engaging in multiple practices and might have particular internal benefits from them all, that doesn't mean I have to bring them together in any external or practical way—and, for the most part, I don't.  Rather, I often take hints from my various practices and spirits that say things like "you should bring this problem to us" or "you should take this problem over there to that shrine where they can help you more than this can".  Each tradition and system is like a toolkit, each with its own focus; while different toolkits might have some common tools shared between them, that doesn't mean you can use a plumbing toolkit to do electrical work just because they both have a hammer.

After that, the next thing I'd consider first is whether a system is amenable to being blended at all.  For instance, orisha religion is "closed"—both in the sense that there are practices limited by initiation as well as it being complete unto itself which doesn't grant itself to be blended with other things lest one break ritual protocols and traditions; orisha religion isn't just some set of practices, but there's a manner and mode to them as well, a system of logic and thinking that facilitates and guides it that provide the rules for determining what is or isn't permissible, because this tradition as a whole isn't up to me.  That's the thing about joining a tradition, too: you might be entrusted with a tradition, but you don't have the final say in it because you have your elders that passed down to you from their elders something that needs to be maintained and passed onto yet others as it is, something bigger than myself that I might engage with and develop but which I don't have the license necessarily to alter at a fundamental level.  To that end, I don't bring non-orisha stuff to my orisha shrines, nor do I bring orisha stuff to my non-orisha shrines; there are things I often go to my orisha for that I don't go to other practices for and vice versa, and sometimes my orisha will say "take care of this problem by going to this other tradition", but that's about the extent of it.

There's also the issue for me of whether it's even convenient or whether it makes sense to blend things at all.  Some traditions and practices can, sure, assuming they have enough in common to work on a common basis or the spirits of which grant permission to do so by letting me reach one spirit through the mask of another or the like, but it should also be remembered that each system and tradition has its own approach to understanding the world, its own cosmology, its own foundation upon which it rests—and each of those are valid and true on their own terms in their own contexts, regardless of what other contexts say for themselves.  As such, each worldview is itself a sort of tool and resource, a means by which a problem can be understood, and sometimes it helps to keep different worldviews separate because different worldviews allow for different ways of understanding a situation and therefore different solutions to fixing a problem.  Blending systems together can often wipe away those distinctions, and I rather like keeping my options open.

**PAA: What advice would you offer to newcomers interested in pursuing a path in Hermeticism and related esoteric traditions?**

Hermeticism or not, if you're just getting started in general, then I would say it doesn't matter what you specifically start with: pick up any book, any grimoire, any class and just start doing it.  If it works for you and you get good results out of it, keep going, and maybe branch out later if you have the time and energy to try out some new experiments.  If it doesn't work for you and you're not getting anything out of it after giving it an honest try, then try something else; you've still learned something about yourself and you've still picked up a few tricks and techniques that will still serve you somewhere down the line.  (Just don't bother with the *Kybalion*, it's garbage any way you look at it, even though it tries to convince you that it's not.)

Don't be afraid of learning and reading; as I said earlier, while we call it the Work for a reason, study is just as much a part of that as anything else, and it really does pay to "work smarter, not harder".  Much of this stuff is still wrapped up in research of original sources, and even with scholarly stuff available to us, being familiar with stuff with our own eyes and hands is still worth as much, so don't be afraid of that.  We all like convenience, but sometimes it really is also about the journey in addition to the destination.  Don't try to mask your own ignorance with cliché mystification; clarity comes from knowledge, and knowledge comes from learning.

I recall seeing a quote recently from the ancient Egyptian text *The Maxims of Ptahhotep*: "All conduct should be so straight that you can measure it with a plumb-line".  Often times, morals and ethics often get put to the side in a lot of magical systems, seeing that more as the domain of religion (whether such a magical system encourages religion or one is doing it to escape it), but I think it's worth it to always keep one's own conduct in order regardless of one's views on religion.  The *Arbatel*, arguably my favorite Renaissance grimoire and magical work, is light on technique but huge on morals and ethics, and I like thinking of it as a sort of Protestant Pietist response to the "Catholicism" of the usual Solomonic grimoires; for the *Arbatel*, morals and ethics really make the magician, not the other way around, and I think it's important to remember that.  After all, so many of our communities are marred by jerks and fraudsters and abusers, and we certainly don't need any more added to the mix; learning how to live one's life to the best also means learning how to live in the best way possible.  Don't neglect your own morals, but hold yourself to yours and others to theirs as well.

Accept complexity, but reject complication.  Not everything can be simple, and sometimes there's just things out there that are going to be difficult or heady; sometimes that's just the nature of a thing, where things are inherently complex.  However, no matter how complex things might be, we never need to complicate them, meaning that there's always a simplest possible approach to engaging with a topic or a problem; don't introduce your own complication or treat something as more complicated than it has to be.  When you introduce complication, you introduce fragility and limitation; once you figure out the simplest possible approach, no matter how simple it actually is, then you can be assured of progress (although the complexity inherent to a thing can still throw challenges your way!).

**PAA: Thank you so much for providing so many indepth answers to our questions. Your time is greatly appreciated.**

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