Paracelsus and Powerpoint

It's not often you hear the words 'Paracelsus' and 'Powerpoint' in the same sentence, but that's exactly how I can embody the MA Western Esotericism Study Weekend in Exeter! It was a most useful orientation to the scope of work in the subject, the research endeavours, and the names of those prominent luminaries of particular import. At the end of the first day, I was buzzing with ideas and ignited by discussions with lecturers such as Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke and Christopher McIntosh.

I also discovered a sudden resonance with the work of Emanuel Swedenborg, whom I had not specifically studied, but was brought to life by a film and lecture by Michael Stanley, who has written and lectured on the Swedenborgian work for many years. Strangely, the lecture made sense of the version of heaven found in "Lovely Bones," a fiction I've just finished reading, by Alice Sebold (and soon to be a film by Peter jackson).

One enjoyable aspect of the course was the variety of conversations going on and the different backgrounds of those attending; everything from Theosophy to Ismali, from Kabbalah to Chaos Magick! It was however strange that everything was being approached from the purely academic perspective (as one would expect) which was fine for discussing influences and transmissions of the Great Work in history, but worked less well for a workshop on Alchemical Frontispieces. I found it frustrating to be embroiled in a discussion of whether a particular figure in a particular drawing represented Antimony or not, when usually I would have simply walked into the picture and asked the figures themselves!

It's important to remember that this is a living, breathing, *practical* operative system, for change through the work, not a second-hand analysis from a distance. I appreciate the importance of both, increasingly so, but they must be balanced otherwise we risk losing the very "Cor" of the "Corpus" we are studying.

Well, I have plenty arising from the weekend; e-mails to write, papers to exchange, a visit to the Ritman Library in Amsterdam next month, and a timeline that I want to produce, which I'll make available on http://www.westernesoterictradition.com .

At least my first paper (on Alchemy) wasn't too weak - I got a functional pass - but the next paper is more challenging, on psychology and ritual. Then there's the Bibliographical Diary to complete, ugh!

Signing off for today in the Great Work

F.P.