u/keisnz

Lately I've been reading more greco-egyptian theurgy and the Hermetic texts, specially the Asclepius passage about animated statues, and its changing a lot how I see statues/images of the gods.

More and more I dont see them as “the god itself” or just religious art. I kinda see them as condensed symbolic points for much larger cosmic/divine processes.

Like, the gods themselves feel more like vast intelligible/cosmic forces that manifest through astral patterns, planetary combinations etc, and then more personally through daimons/spirits closer to human life.

Then the statue works almost like:

a material condensation of that current

but also an imaginal template that helps the psyche connect with related spirits/forms

For example twice I meditated on or imagined a statue of Aphrodite/Venus before sleep and later dreamed about feminine figures. But I didnt experience them as “literally Aphrodite”. They felt more personal, closer to my own life, almost like intermediary daimonic forms tied to my own psyche/history. The dreams were not arbitrary, but guiding and compensatory wrt my concerns with my current relationship with a woman.

Honestly I think part of why this works better for me is because I dont really experience the gods anymore as mythological personalities like in Homer. I experience them more as stable symbolic or cosmic presences. Sometimes through statues, sometimes through signs/seals with divine names, specially syncretic names like Zeus-Serapis, Demeter-Isis, Hermes-Thoth etc.

Weirdly the syncretic names make the gods feel less mythological and more like cosmic currents or intelligible forces. Almost like they stop being “characters” and become symbolic centers that can evoke more personal daimonic/spiritual images in dreams and imagination.

And thats the part im most curious about. Im not really posting this to make claims, mostly because I wanna know if other people have experienced something similar, and if this kind of thing also existed in antiquity. The idea that the gods themselves are approached more through stable symbolic forms, while more personal or emotionally immediate contact happens through intermediary daimonic forms instead of the gods appearing directly.

Lately I've been reading more greco-egyptian theurgy and the Hermetic texts, specially the Asclepius passage about animated statues, and its changing a lot how I see statues/images of the gods.

More and more I dont see them as “the god itself” or just religious art. I kinda see them as condensed symbolic points for much larger cosmic/divine processes.

Like, the gods themselves feel more like vast intelligible/cosmic forces that manifest through astral patterns, planetary combinations etc, and then more personally through daimons/spirits closer to human life.

Then the statue works almost like:

a material condensation of that current

but also an imaginal template that helps the psyche connect with related spirits/forms

For example twice I meditated on or imagined a statue of Aphrodite/Venus before sleep and later dreamed about feminine figures. But I didnt experience them as “literally Aphrodite”. They felt more personal, closer to my own life, almost like intermediary daimonic forms tied to my own psyche/history. The dreams were not arbitrary, but guiding and compensatory wrt my concerns with my current relationship with a woman.

Honestly I think part of why this works better for me is because I dont really experience the gods anymore as mythological personalities like in Homer. I experience them more as stable symbolic or cosmic presences. Sometimes through statues, sometimes through signs/seals with divine names, specially syncretic names like Zeus-Serapis, Demeter-Isis, Hermes-Thoth etc.

Weirdly the syncretic names make the gods feel less mythological and more like cosmic currents or intelligible forces. Almost like they stop being “characters” and become symbolic centers that can evoke more personal daimonic/spiritual images in dreams and imagination.

And thats the part im most curious about. Im not really posting this to make claims, mostly because I wanna know if other people have experienced something similar, and if this kind of thing also existed in antiquity. The idea that the gods themselves are approached more through stable symbolic forms, while more personal or emotionally immediate contact happens through intermediary daimonic forms instead of the gods appearing directly.

In the Homeric tradition, theophanies of the gods are often represented in highly anthropomorphic and emotionally charged ways. Gods appear as reactive personalities who speak, threaten, deceive, become angry, favor individuals, intervene dramatically in events, and inspire fear in a very personal sense. In many cases, these manifestations seem phenomenologically close to what later Platonists would classify as daimōnic beings: particularized, affective, relational, and emotionally expressive presences.

However, Plato criticizes precisely this anthropopathic portrayal of the gods, and later Platonists such as Iamblichus and Proclus describe the gods as transcendent and supra-rational realities beyond corporeal form and human passions.

Because of this, I am trying to understand how later Platonists conceived genuine divine theophanies.

Is it correct to say that, in a Platonic or Neoplatonic framework, authentic manifestations of the gods would tend to appear in a more majestic, hieratic, luminous, or symbolically perfect way, rather than as emotionally reactive personalities? For example:

a silent enthroned Zeus,

a radiant Helios,

an overwhelming presence of light,

a motionless divine figure,

or even an abstract symbolic manifestation.

And conversely, would more conversational, emotional, dramatic, fear-inducing, seductive, unstable, or psychologically “human” visionary encounters be understood instead as daimōnic manifestations or lower psychic entities rather than direct appearances of the gods themselves?

Part of my confusion comes from the fact that the phenomenology traditionally associated with daimōnes seems much closer to these latter forms of encounter. In many religious and magical texts, daimōnes, paredroi, and intermediary spirits appear as highly particularized beings with recognizable personalities, emotional tones, fluctuating behavior, local attachments, and direct involvement in human affairs. They can converse, threaten, flatter, seduce, mislead, guide, or form intimate relationships with practitioners. In the Greek Magical Papyri especially, daimōnic and paredric presences often seem immediate, relational, unstable, and experientially “near,” in contrast to the overwhelming transcendence usually associated with the Platonic gods.

Because of this, I wonder whether later Platonists effectively relocated the more anthropopathic and emotionally immediate dimensions of traditional religious experience away from the gods proper and toward the intermediary daimōnic realm, while preserving divine imagery itself in a more idealized, impassive, and metaphysically elevated form.

This also makes me wonder how Neoplatonists would have interpreted texts like the Greek Magical Papyri, where even gods themselves often appear in ways that seem phenomenologically much closer to daimōnic beings: emotionally reactive, coercible, conversational, threatening, or intensely personal rather than purely transcendent and hieratic.

I also wonder whether Giordano Bruno preserves a similar phenomenological distinction between gods and daimōnic beings despite shifting from a receptive to a more operative magical paradigm. Even in Bruno, higher gods seem to retain a more vast, luminous, symbolic, and archetypal character, while spirits and daimons appear more emotionally dynamic, relational, and psychologically immediate, much like in the broader Neoplatonic framework.

One major difference between Platonism and traditional Hellenic religion seems to be that Plato criticized the anthropomorphic myths and treated the gods as supra-rational realities, while daimones acted as intermediaries between gods and humans.

According to Apuleius, Iamblichus and Proclus, daimones seem to affect the imagination, producing dreams, visions, and imaginal experiences. These images often appear in human (and sometimes animal) form, speaking, moving, expressing emotions and personality.

My confusion is about the morphology and ontological status of these appearances. Are such forms mainly shaped by the psyche/imagination of the receiver, or can daimonic mediation produce appearances of the mythological gods themselves in anthropomorphic Homeric forms?

If, in Platonism, the term "gods" supposedly refer to gods transcending anthropomorphic form, then why would the imaginal/daemonic level present them this way at all?

I know Proclus later reintegrated traditional myth into Neoplatonism, but my understanding is that for him, myth describes the whole seira/procession of a god from henad to matter, not just the phenomenology of daimonic appearances in dreams and visions.

The Greek Magical Papyri also seem to complicate the issue, since they portray not only daimones but the gods themselves as speaking, threatening, reacting emotionally, etc., in highly anthropomorphic ways.

One major difference between Platonism and traditional Hellenic religion seems to be that Plato criticized the anthropomorphic myths and treated the gods as supra-rational realities, while daimones acted as intermediaries between gods and humans.

According to Apuleius, Iamblichus and Proclus, daimones seem to affect the imagination, producing dreams, visions, and imaginal experiences. These images often appear in human (and sometimes animal) form, speaking, moving, expressing emotions and personality.

My confusion is about the morphology and ontological status of these appearances. Are such forms mainly shaped by the psyche/imagination of the receiver, or can daimonic mediation produce appearances of the mythological gods themselves in anthropomorphic Homeric forms?

If, in Platonism, the term "gods" supposedly refer to gods transcending anthropomorphic form, then why would the imaginal/daemonic level present them this way at all?

I know Proclus later reintegrated traditional myth into Neoplatonism, but my understanding is that for him, myth describes the whole seira/procession of a god from henad to matter, not just the phenomenology of daimonic appearances in dreams and visions.

The Greek Magical Papyri also seem to complicate the issue, since they portray not only daimones but the gods themselves as speaking, threatening, reacting emotionally, etc., in highly anthropomorphic ways.

Hi, I have a background in Hermeticism and Neoplatonic Theurgy, reinterpreted with a worldview similar to that of Giordano Bruno. My model basically works as follows:

The universe/God as a single substance, with infinite, multiple expressions through natural forces/processes/potentialities, which I like to name after the name of greco-egyptian gods. These gods manifest through planets, then in a more particular and multiple way through spirit/daimonic currents in the sublunary world. This applies to earth but also any other planet. Then these spirit/daimonic currents leave impressions in the imagination, taking particular shapes adapted to the soul of the receptor.

So in summary:

God -> gods -> planets -> spirits/daimones -> inner images

Also, given my jungian background with active imagination and dream journaling, most of my inner images have arosen spontaneously over the last two years. Few of them are crafted. Some of them have show a clear archetypical behaviour, like "Hermetic", "Aphroditic", etc.. but I don't consider those images the mythological gods themselves. Based on my model, these are spiritual/daimonic impressions in my imagination "rooted" on different gods, and two options that I considered to anchor them to their divine roots are:

1. Visualizing each figure in an imaginal space which contains a statue of its god, like a stabilizing "loci" (inspired by the concept of "animated statues" from the Hermetic text Asclepius)

2. Visualizing each figure with a symbol of its god, for example, the man in suit which I consider hermetic could have a necklace with the Hermetic Caduceus. The Aphroditic figure as a female figure with wings who could have a tattoo of a heart with an eye, represeting her roots in Aphrodite.

In both cases, this helps me anchor the figure and the dialogue under a wider cosmic current, so the figure is both personal and interpersonal, connected to a wider, known archetype represented by the name of a god.

Of course nothing is set in stone, the cosmos for me is an eternal, ongoing process, so are my inner figures. The Hermetic figure could evolve and embrace more than one god at some point, or reveal affinity with another god. Same for the Aphroditic one. I think flexibility is key.

I wonder if this is a common practice at all, or if I'm coming up with something weird that noone does. I know chaos magic is all about finding your own system based on results, but I think sharing at some common patterns with others would not hurt, but reassure my practice a little bit.

At the moment, the communication with this figures usually happens voluntarily when I need advice on something. At times when I'm having a crisis, they arise spontaneously, helping me with a calm and clarity that myself don't have at that moment, and their presence feels very regulating, like if they were "other" that actually help me.

Lastly, there are inner figures which represent my darkest and strongest emotions, which make me do stupid stuff and bring me suffering. I can at least visualize them, yet I don't have any agency over them. For these figures, it doesn't make sense to me to assign them any symbol of any god, as they seem to be rooted on my darkest emotions and memories, and if they ever had a godly root, it feels very distorted. Nothing stops me from developing a better relationship with these darker figures and finding their godly archetype at some point, but that's how I see it right now.

Thoughts, help, suggestions? My practice feels lonely, so anything is welcome, really.

Have a good day.

I believe in a Pagan God, not a Christian one. Sometimes I prefer to call it 'the Infinite One' or 'Unus Mundus', since I lean towards a kind of pantheism with panentheistic tendencies.

This God is not someone up in the sky, it is something that is everywhere. It doesn't really 'exist' as a separate being, but rather is all things, without being exhausted by any of them. It is constant change, generation, destruction and transformation.

It is not a God to pray to, but a God to know through its many expressions, which I call gods, principles, powers, or natural forces. I like referring to these forces using names of Greek or even Egyptian gods, but de-literalizing their mythological meaning and treating them as cosmic and natural forces.

I don't believe in a beginning of the universe, since for me the cosmos is eternal and infinite. The planets, the zodiac and the fixed stars and their multiple combinations are visible nodes of these infinite divine expressions. I don't like to map gods and planets 1:1. What I do is more combinatorial, as a single god can manifest through several planets.

What the Greeks called daimones are the more concrete manifestations of these finite astrological nodes in the sublunar world, although each planet on the cosmos has their own set of daimonic manifestations. "Daimonic" means more "concrete, particular, multiple" from a human point of view. But these daimones form a continuous with the cosmic forces I call gods. It's just a matter of language and perspective.

Daimones are natural forces on earth, sea and sky, complex and not anthropomorphic, but they manifest in my imagination, which acts as an interface, through images or phantasmata. These can take human, animal or hybrid forms, sometimes beautiful, sometimes grotesque, and sometimes ambiguous, containing both at once. These images are usually highly personal, not defined by any kind of mythology, as Greek mythology left daimones and the impressions they leave in the imagination as pretty undefined on purpose. I usually imagine these phasmata besides statues of the gods from where their daimonic sources "derive" from. These statues are what the Art Of Memory calls “loci”, fixed imaginal spaces made to locate the images. Sometimes I visualise planetary spheres around these images instead, when the godly associations are not that clear, then I let imagination to spontaneously pick the spheres that best channel the divine energy to my image (I might incorporate the zodiac and fixed spheres in the future, but I'm yet not that familiar with the whole astrological symbolism). It's all like an inner microcosmos. My rituals are imaginal and internal. The Art of Memory provides with tools to build Memory Palaces to practice it properly and in a structured way. Also, the inner images I use are mostly taken from the dream journal I've been writing over the last couple of years, plus some other images which arose spontaneously during active imagination sessions. Many of these images are earthly, human, not too complex. Few of them feel numinous (eg a golden eye in the sky along with a hierophant healing me, or a weird bronze statue of Hermes at the entrance of a masonic lodge in Paris).

I also don't believe in a final salvation as the goal of the soul. My goal is to feel existence.

I don't believe in a single divine savior like Jesus Christ, although I respect him as a great teacher, just like Buddha or Lao Tzu. Instead I listen to many Greek, Egyptian, Roman and Renaissance thinkers, like Heraclitus, Pythagoras, Plato, the Neoplatonists, Hermes Trismegistus or Giordano Bruno.

At the same time, I am open to Neoplatonic Christians who can contribute ideas to my worldview without imposing dogma, like Synesius of Cyrene (who already was quite heterodox and emphasized the role of dreams and imagination), Marsilio Ficino, Nicholas of Cusa or even the physician Paracelsus, who, despite working within a Christian framework, integrated hermetic ideas and intuited that imagination has effects on the body, and vice versa.

As I mentioned earlier, my main spiritual tool is imagination (Phantasia) and the Art of Memory, based on the Platonic idea of Anamnesis, that to know is to remember.

As I mentioned, imagination works actively and operatively as an interface between my inner images and the forces of the universe, together with bodily sensitivity, and the sacralization of everyday tasks by associating them with gods or treating them as offerings to them (assimilatio).

I see this spiritual view as hermetic-neoplatonic, filtered through Renaissance ideas, and I wanted to share it with people who might find it interesting. Giordano Bruno is the philosopher who helped me make the most sense of everything I had been studying for years.

I also recognize that Hindu Tantra, especially Kashmir Shaivism, despite some differences, is the closest living spiritual tradition to my worldview and practice today. I sometimes study it to help connect the pieces of the Western tradition that have come to me in fragments, which, once brought together, form a coherent and beautiful whole.

Thanks for reading.

ps: the inner images I use are mostly taken from the dream journal I've been writing over the last couple of years, plus some other images which arose spontaneously during active imagination sessions.