Jake Stratton-Kent wrote:
> you say you are "genuinely curious given the other at least equally important
> players why we ought to consider late paganism essentially Egyptian,
> unless of course you meant something else?" -
>
Perhaps that is going too far but here goes anyway . . .
Because the first two "laws" of the decalogue appear to define both
Paganism and coincidentally Egyptian religion.
But yes synthesises Babylonian and Greek elements - but who makes the
synthesis contained in
for example the Corpus Hermeticum?
I tentatively suggest that the strongest element of both CH and its
practical counterpart the PGM is Egyptian/Demotic -
Many of the magical techniques and ideas seem to me very much the same
as one finds in magical texts from Egyptian temple libraries -
but with a bit of added Greek local colour : ) .
You say "Hellenistic" which is fine - "Hellenistic" (as opposed to
Hellenic) is a pejorative term for the culture of Ptolemaic Egypt.
There is an issue in the CH about the Greek language -
So for example classical paganism revolves around the seven sacred
vowels of the Greek language -
a very important part of magick then and indeed now -
Jacco Dieleman discusses this at length, the apparent acceptance by the
Egyptian priests of this idea -
which is a good a piece of synthesis as you can ask for -
i've still an open mind on that - as you know the Egyptian language like
Hebrew has no signs for vowels -
and AFAIK its unclear how they handled this - but there is new research
coming out about previous unknown
aspects of the _pronounciation_ of for example Pyramids texts - so
perhaps the Egyptians recognised in the Greek
seven vowel system something they already knew?
bb/93
Mogg
of the late classical period pretty well -
but they a
> 'The One Zeus is Serapis!'
>
> ALWays
>
> Jake
>
>
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