In this episode, we descend from the philosophical heights of abstract ethical systems into the crucible of individual becoming, where morality is no longer the contemplation of inherited commandments but the ruthless examination of action and intention. We explore how the Temple of Set's essay on "Sin and Virtue"—channeled through the ritual dialogue of Shu and Tefnut, the visible and the hidden—seizes the ancient problem of good and evil and drags it into the domain of self-creation, declaring that the engine of ethical reality is not obedience to external law but the dynamic interplay of behavior and motive, result and intention, visibility and concealment.

From the declaration that sin and virtue are two sides of the same coin, to the challenge that any virtue can be called a sin and any sin can be called a virtue; from the two measures of visible behavior and hidden motive, to the call to shine the light of truth upon plans, actions, and paths of becoming; from the weighing of results and the examination of intent, to the final declaration that the future must be planned and created—we trace the monumental, deeply challenging, and astonishingly personal legacy of this ethical framework and ask: In a world that still seeks easy answers, still craves external validation, and still hides from the terror of genuine self-examination, do we have the courage to become our own moral authors, or will we retreat into the comfortable authority of inherited sin and virtue?

🎧 ABOUT THE RUBY TABLET

The Ruby Tablet Podcast is a philosophical and spiritual journey through the essays of the Temple of Set, exploring the great traditions of human thought—from ancient Egypt to the present day. Each episode is a deep dive into the ideas that help shape the Self and fan the Black Flame.

🔗 SOURCES & READING LIST:

Essay: Sin and Virtue Classification: V2 - 17A.X - 1 Author: Robert Menschel IV° Date: October 14, XXIX — O. Shuti Working, Set-XV HTML Revision: Sept. 9, 1998 CE Subject: Ethics and Xeper Reading List: [As per ritual notes]

📚 RECOMMENDED READING:

• Plato, Republic (trans. Allan Bloom)
• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (trans. W.D. Ross)
• Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil (trans. Walter Kaufmann)
• Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality (trans. Maudemarie Clark and Alan Swensen)
• Aleister Crowley, Magick Without Tears, Chapter on Ethics and Will
• Don Webb, Uncle Setnakt's Essential Guide to the Left Hand Path
• Michael A. Aquino, The Temple of Set, Volume I
• Stephen E. Flowers, Lords of the Left-Hand Path
• St. Augustine, Confessions (for contrast with the Left-Hand Path)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica (for contrast with the Left-Hand Path)
• Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (for contrast with the Left-Hand Path)
• John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism (for contrast with the Left-Hand Path)

🏷️ HASHTAGS

#SinAndVirtue #Ethics #Xeper #Set #TempleOfSet #LeftHandPath #Shu #Tefnut #Shuti #Maat #IsolateIntelligence #SelfCreation #Becoming #BlackFlame #Philosophy #EthicalBecoming #MoralRelativism #Virtue #Sin #GoodAndEvil #BeyondGoodAndEvil #Nietzsche #Crowley #MagickWithoutTears #TheRubyTablet #PhilosophyPodcast #WisdomTraditions #AncientWisdom #SelfExamination #ConsciousVision #ConscientiousReflection #HiddenMotive #VisibleBehavior #ActionAndIntention #WillToPower #SelfDeification #Godhood #Initiation #Ritual #XeperWorking #SetianPhilosophy #EthicalFramework #MoralAutonomy #TheCoinOfSinAndVirtue #ThusItBegins

In this episode, we descend from the cosmic struggles of Egyptian mythology into the intimate terrain of the human psyche, where the gods are no longer distant beings to be worshipped but internal forces to be integrated. We explore how Ruth Nielsen III°—a Setian philosopher and practitioner—takes the ancient Egyptian dyad of Set and HarWer and transforms it into a powerful simile for understanding the divergent polarities within the Self, declaring that the engine of spiritual development is not the elimination of our internal conflicts but the dynamic balance of our most seemingly irreconcilable parts.

In a world that still struggles with trust, still wrestles with guilt, and still debates the relationship between the individual and the community, do we have the courage to do the Work, or will we retreat into the comfortable fantasy of spiritual achievement without psychological foundation?

🎧 ABOUT THE RUBY TABLET

The Ruby Tablet Podcast is a philosophical and spiritual journey through the essays of the Temple of Set, exploring the great traditions of human thought—from ancient Egypt to the present day. Each episode is a deep dive into the ideas that help shape the Self and fan the Black Flame.

🔗 SOURCES & READING LIST:

Essay: Set / HarWer – The Discussion Continues

Author: Ruth Nielsen III°

Date: June 23, XXVIII

Revision: Sept. 9, 1998 CE

Subject: Self-Integration

Classification: V2 - 159.2I - 1

📚 RECOMMENDED READING:

• Milton H. Erickson, The Collected Papers of Milton H. Erickson on Hypnosis (ed. Ernest Rossi)
• Erik Erikson, Childhood and Society
• Erik Erikson, Identity: Youth and Crisis
• Clifford H. Swenson, Jr., "Personality Development in the Family" in The Handbook of Family Psychology and Therapy (ed. Luciano L'Abate, 1985)
• Dane Rudhyar, The Planetarization of Consciousness
• Dane Rudhyar, The Astrology of Personality
• Michael A. Aquino, The Temple of Set: The First Four Degrees
• Don Webb, Uncle Setnakt's Essential Guide to the Left Hand Path
• Stephen Flowers, Lords of the Left-Hand Path
• Aleister Crowley, Magick Without Tears
• Carl Jung, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
• Carl Jung, Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self
• James Hillman, Re-Visioning Psychology
• Donald Winnicott, Playing and Reality
• John Bowlby, Attachment and Loss (3 volumes)

🏷️ HASHTAGS

#Set #HarWer #SelfIntegration #Xeper #Psychology #Erikson #Erickson #DevelopmentalStages #Trust #Autonomy #Initiative #Industry #Identity #Intimacy #Generativity #Integrity #PersonalityDevelopment #DynamicBalance #Setian #TempleOfSet #LeftHandPath #TheRubyTablet #PhilosophyPodcast #PsychologyPodcast #WisdomTraditions #SelfDevelopment #PersonalGrowth #Magick #Ritual #AeonicFormula #Hypnosis #SelfEsteem #Guilt #Shame #Doubt #Inferiority #Despair #GoldenMean #Individualion #Individuation #BlackFlame #OSOM #AncientEgypt #EgyptianMythology #SetAndHarWer #PsychologicalIntegration #SpiritualDevelopment #SelfOvercoming #WillToPower

In this episode, we descend from the speculative heights of philosophical abstraction into the cold, hard terrain of cultural autopsy, where we confront a diagnosis so bleak it borders on the prophetic. We explore how R. Amn DeCecco IV°—an observer of the human condition, a student of Setamorphosis, a voice crying out from the intellectual wilderness—declares that the entity we call "man" has expired, not through any dramatic apocalypse but through a quiet, unnoticed death that occurred somewhere between the assassinations of the 1960s and the cultural stagnation of the present day.

We trace DeCecco's influences—from the ancient Egyptian understanding of psychological development to Schwaller de Lubicz's "Crowning of the Skull" thesis, from the intellectual provocations of Anton LaVey to the dawning realization that the great geniuses of the past have no counterparts in the present—and we ask: Was DeCecco a prophet who saw the trajectory of Western civilization with terrifying clarity, or a reactionary who mistook his own alienation for a universal condition?

From the rejection of the "adolescent fantasy" of self-improvement to the devastating assertion that humanity has achieved only the psychological maturity of a 17-year-old, from the identification of the "Soaring Sixties" as humanity's last gasp of individuality to the grim taxonomy of cultural stagnation—sequels, remakes, repetitive fashion, the deification of childish sports, the re-consolidation of old religious and political morays—we trace the monumental, deeply unsettling, and astonishingly prescient diagnosis of DeCecco's essay and ask: In a world that still produces technological wonders but no new Mona Lisas, still builds rockets but no new Ninth Symphonies, and still debates the same tired political battles while ignoring the extinction of genius, do we have the courage to recognize that "man" is dead, or will we continue to dance in the graveyard, pretending the corpse is still breathing?

🎧 ABOUT THE RUBY TABLET

The Ruby Tablet Podcast is a philosophical and spiritual journey through the essays of the Temple of Set, exploring the great traditions of human thought—from ancient Egypt to the present day. Each episode is a deep dive into the ideas that help shape the Self and fan the Black Flame.

🔗 SOURCES & READING LIST:

Essay: Man is Dead Classification: V2 - 159.2 - 1 Author: R. Amn DeCecco IV° Date: April/May XIX Publication: Scroll HTML Revision: Sept. 5, 1998 CE Subject: Modern Society; Mankind's Annihilation Reading List: None specified

📚 RECOMMENDED READING:

Schwaller de Lubicz, The Temple in Man: Sacred Architecture and the Perfect Man Isaac Asimov, Foundation (trilogy) George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West Johan Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death Anton LaVey, The Satanic Bible Plato, The Republic Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics Marcus Aurelius, Meditations Aleister Crowley, Magick Without Tears

🏷️ HASHTAGS

#ManIsDead #DeCecco #CulturalCriticism #Philosophy #ModernSociety #MankindsAnnihilation #Setamorphosis #TheElect #Ennui #Genius #Individualism #MassSociety #Conformity #PsychologicalDevelopment #SchwallerDeLubicz #CrowningOfTheSkull #Foundation #Asimov #Spengler #DeclineOfTheWest #Nietzsche #TheMasses #SoaringSixties #CulturalStasis #Sequels #Remakes #IntellectualDeath #SpiritualPoverty #LeftHandPath #TempleOfSet #TheRubyTablet #PhilosophyPodcast #WisdomTraditions #Set #Xeper #AncientWisdom #Modernity #PostModernity #CulturalDiagnosis #Apocalypse #Transcendence #TheBlackFlame

n this episode, we descend from the orderly temples of organized religion into the wild, fungal undergrowth of human consciousness, where the sacred is not a matter of faith but of direct, chemical encounter with the divine. We explore how R. Gordon Wasson—the J.P. Morgan banker turned ethnomycologist, the Swiss-American outsider who married a Russian mycophile, the unlikely pioneer of a field that barely had a name—seized the anthropological inheritance of his time and dragged it into the muddy, mushroom-strewn reality of preindustrial ritual, declaring that the engine of religion is not the abstract perfection of doctrine but the dynamic interplay of plant, brain, and culture.

In a world that still craves direct spiritual experience, still fears the wild things that grow in the earth, and still debates the relationship between consciousness and the divine, do we have the courage to eat the mushroom, or will we retreat into the comfortable authority of the priest who tells us faith is enough?

🎧 ABOUT THE RUBY TABLET

The Ruby Tablet Podcast is a philosophical and spiritual journey through the essays of the Temple of Set, exploring the great traditions of human thought—from ancient Egypt to the present day. Each episode is a deep dive into the ideas that help shape the Self and fan the Black Flame.

🔗 SOURCES & READING LIST:

Essay #29: R. Gordon Wasson and the Mushroom Cults

Author: Pat Hardy II° Date: October 1, XIX Revision: January 1, XXIV HTML Revision: January 25, 1998 CE Subject: Psychology, Sociology, Drugs Reading List: 3L, 16A, 16L, 16M

📚 RECOMMENDED READING:

• Wasson, Valentina Pavlovna, and R. Gordon Wasson. Mushrooms, Russia and History, 2 vol. Pantheon Books, NY, 1957. (Out of print and quite rare—try large university libraries.)
• Wasson, R. Gordon. Soma: Divine Mushroom of Immortality. NY: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc. The Hague: Moutan, 1968.
• Wasson, R. Gordon, George and Florence Cowan, and Willard Rhodes. María Sabina and Her Mazatec Mushroom Velada. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, NY & London, 1974.
• Wasson, R. Gordon, and Carl A.P. Ruck. The Road to Eleusis: Unveiling the Secret of the Mysteries. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, NY & London, 1978.
• Allegro, John. The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross. Hodder & Stoughton, 1970. (Regarded as crank scholarship—unlike Wasson's work, which is treated respectfully by the academic community.)
• Schultes, Richard Evans, and Albert Hofmann. Plants of the Gods: Their Sacred, Healing, and Hallucinogenic Powers. McGraw-Hill, 1979.
• Furst, Peter T. Flesh of the Gods: The Ritual Use of Hallucinogens. Praeger, 1972.
• La Barre, Weston. The Peyote Cult. Yale University Press, 1938.
• Harner, Michael J., ed. Hallucinogens and Shamanism. Oxford University Press, 1973.
• Ott, Jonathan. Pharmacotheon: Entheogenic Drugs, Their Plant Sources and History. Natural Products Co., 1993.
• Ruck, Carl A.P. The Road to Eleusis: Unveiling the Secret of the Mysteries (with R. Gordon Wasson and Albert Hofmann). Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978.
• Dobkin de Rios, Marlene. Hallucinogens: Cross-Cultural Perspectives. University of New Mexico Press, 1984.
• McKenna, Terence. Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge. Bantam Books, 1992.

🏷️ HASHTAGS

#Wasson #Ethnomycology #Ethnobotany #Ethnopharmacology #Psychedelics #Entheogens #Mushrooms #MagicMushrooms #Psilocybin #AmanitaMuscaria #FlyAgaric #Soma #RigVeda #EleusinianMysteries #MaríaSabina #Mazatec #Huautla #Velada

In this episode, we descend from the abstract categories of political ideology into the labyrinthine architecture of the human skull, where philosophy is no longer the contemplation of transcendent principles but the uncomfortable recognition that our deepest convictions may be wired into the very structure of our brains. We explore how Pat Hardy II°—a student of the Black Arts who turned his gaze from the occult to the neurological—seized upon the ancient handedness metaphor and dragged it into the cold light of cognitive science, declaring that the engine of political and spiritual conflict is not the clash of ideas but the lateral specialization of brain function, the eternal war between the verbal left hemisphere and the pattern-seeking right.

In a world that still thinks in left and right, still wages war between hemispheres, and still projects its shadows onto the bodies of its enemies, do we have the courage to look in the mirror, or will we retreat into the comfortable authority of our own partial vision?

🎧 ABOUT THE RUBY TABLET

The Ruby Tablet Podcast is a philosophical and spiritual journey through the essays of the Temple of Set, exploring the great traditions of human thought—from ancient Egypt to the present day. Each episode is a deep dive into the ideas that help shape the Self and fan the Black Flame.

🔗 SOURCES & READING LIST:

Essay #V2 - 159.1 - 1: Of the Handedness Metaphor

Author: Pat Hardy II° Date: April 15, XXII HTML Revision: Jan 25, 1998 CE Subject: Psychology Reading List: 14E

📚 RECOMMENDED READING:

• Julian Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind
• Benjamin Lee Whorf, Language, Thought, and Reality
• George Lakoff, Women, Fire and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal About the Mind
• Iain McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World
• Carl Jung, Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self (particularly on the shadow)
• Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged (for the "A=A" mentality)
• Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom (on the psychology of authoritarianism)
• Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (on the Nazi regime as a political phenomenon)
• Aleister Crowley, Magick Without Tears (on the Left-Hand Path)
• Stephen A. Diamond, Anger, Madness, and the Daimonic (on shadow integration)
• Carl Sagan, The Dragons of Eden (on the evolution of human intelligence)
• Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (on neurology and perception)
• V.S. Ramachandran, Phantoms in the Brain (on hemispheric specialization)
• Michael A. Aquino, The Temple of Set (on the Left-Hand Path tradition)
• Don Webb, Uncle Setnakt's Essential Guide to the Left Hand Path (on practical application)

🏷️ HASHTAGS

#HandednessMetaphor #LeftHandPath #RightHandPath #Neurology #CognitiveScience #HemisphericSpecialization #JulianJaynes #BicameralMind #WhorfianPosition #LanguageAndThought #PatternSeeking #VerbalMind #SilentHemisphere #SwordsmanAndSorcerer #PoliticalLeft #PoliticalRight #Projection #Shadow #Integration #NaziGermany #Totalitarianism #AynRand #AEqualsA #MatrixMind #NDimensional #EvolutionaryPsychology #CognitiveBias #SelfAwareness #Mirror #TempleOfSet #Xeper #Set #TheRubyTablet #PhilosophyPodcast #OccultPodcast #PsychologyPodcast #LeftHandPathPodcast #RightHandPath #CognitiveDissonance #FeedbackLoop #PoliticalPsychology #SpiritualPsychology #Individuation #ShadowWork #SelfKnowledge

In this episode, we descend from the ethereal heights of philosophical abstraction into the shadowed corridors of the human psyche, where the great questions are no longer about the nature of reality but about the nature of ourselves. We explore how Vesa T. Iitti II°—a conscript confronting the machinery of war, a philosopher wrestling with the claims of sociobiology, and an initiate walking the path of Setian self-deification—seized the most urgent questions of our time and dragged them down from the realm of academic debate into the crucible of lived experience. He asks us: Is aggression the engine of our species, or is it merely a symptom of something deeper, something we have refused to face?

In a world that still goes to war, still projects its shadows onto others, and still refuses to confront the primal forces within itself, do we have the courage to face our own darkness, or will we continue to project it outward until there is nothing left?

🎧 ABOUT THE RUBY TABLET

The Ruby Tablet Podcast is a philosophical and spiritual journey through the essays of the Temple of Set, exploring the great traditions of human thought—from ancient Egypt to the present day. Each episode is a deep dive into the ideas that help shape the Self and fan the Black Flame.

🔗 SOURCES & READING LIST:

Essay Classification: V2 - 158 - 1

Author: Vesa T. Iitti II°

Date: April, XXVIII

HTML Revision: January 12, 1998 CE

Subject: Aggression

Reading List:

• Matti Bergstrom, Aivojen fysiologiasta ja psyykesta (On Brain Physiology and the Psyche)
• Kirsti Lagerspetz, Psykologia, jarjen ja tunteen tiede (Psychology, the Science of Reason and Emotion)
• F. Alberoni & S. Veca, Hyva ja Paha (Good and Evil)
• Desmond Morris, The Naked Ape
• Ken Wilber, No Boundary: Eastern and Western Approaches to Personal Growth
• Dr. Michael Aquino, Black Magic in the Crystal Tablet of Set
• Anton LaVey, The Satanic Bible
• Aleister Crowley, The Book of the Law
• The Book of Coming Forth by Night

📚 RECOMMENDED READING:

• Konrad Lorenz, On Aggression
• Desmond Morris, The Naked Ape
• E.O. Wilson, Sociobiology: The New Synthesis
• Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
• Carl Jung, Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self
• Carl Jung, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
• Ken Wilber, No Boundary: Eastern and Western Approaches to Personal Growth
• Anton LaVey, The Satanic Bible
• Dr. Michael Aquino, Black Magic in the Crystal Tablet of Set
• Aleister Crowley, The Book of the Law
• Aleister Crowley, Magick Without Tears
• Alvin Toffler, Future Shock
• Michel de Montaigne, Essays
• Carl von Clausewitz, On War
• The Club of Rome, The Limits to Growth

🏷️ HASHTAGS

#Aggression #Sociobiology #HumanNature #War #Instinct #ShadowWork #PersonaAndShadow #JungianPsychology #KenWilber #DesmondMorris #KonradLorenz #EvolutionaryPsychology #Nationalism #Patriotism #CivilService #ConscientiousObjection #Morality #Ethics #CosmicDialectic #SelfConsciousness #WillToBecome #Xeper #TempleOfSet #LeftHandPath #TheRubyTablet #PhilosophyPodcast #PsychologyPodcast #EsotericPhilosophy #SpiritualPhilosophy #Set #Thelema #AleisterCrowley

In this episode, we descend from the philosophical heights of Plato's Academy and the practical walkways of Aristotle's Lyceum into the shadowy, labyrinthine corridors of Gnostic thought—where philosophy is no longer the contemplation of transcendent ideals or the careful observation of nature, but the desperate engineering of escape from a cosmos that has become a maximum-security prison.

In a world that still seeks escape from the prison of the material, still yearns for secret knowledge, and still divides humanity into the awake and the asleep, the saved and the damned, do we have the courage to think our own thoughts and forge our own path, or will we retreat into the comfortable authority of those who claim to possess the Mystery of the First Mystery?

🎧 ABOUT THE RUBY TABLET

The Ruby Tablet Podcast is a philosophical and spiritual journey through the essays of the Temple of Set, exploring the great traditions of human thought—from ancient Egypt to the present day. Each episode is a deep dive into the ideas that help shape the Self and fan the Black Flame.

🔗 SOURCES & READING LIST:

Essay #16: The Gnosis as an Integral Part of the Hermetic Science

Author: Walter Jantschik II° Date: November 20, 1981 CE Publication: Ph.D. Thesis, University of East Georgia Subject: Gnosis Reading List: Burkitt, Kingsland, Krause, Lea, MacGregor, Mead, Van Groningen, Yamanchi

📚 RECOMMENDED READING:

• Jantschik, Walter II°, The Gnosis as an Integral Part of the Hermetic Science (Ph.D. Thesis, University of East Georgia, 1981)
• Mead, G.R.S., Fragments of a Faith Forgotten (University Books, 1960)
• Jonas, Hans, The Gnostic Religion (Beacon Press, 1958)
• Pagels, Elaine, The Gnostic Gospels (Random House, 1979)
• Burkitt, F.C., Church & Gnosis (Cambridge, 1932)
• Kingsland, William, The Gnosis or Ancient Wisdom in the Christian Scriptures (London, 1937)
• Van Groningen, G., First Century Gnosticism: Its Origin and Motifs (Leiden, 1967)
• Quispel, Gilles, Gnosis and the New Testament (Leiden, 1960)
• Rudolph, Kurt, Gnosis: The Nature and History of Gnosticism (Harper & Row, 1983)
• Filoramo, Giovanni, A History of Gnosticism (Blackwell, 1990)
• The Nag Hammadi Library (various translations, especially the NHL in English, ed. James M. Robinson)
• Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies (various translations)
• Irenaeus, Against Heresies (various translations)
• Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis (various translations)
• Philo of Alexandria, On the Creation, On the Confusion of Tongues, On the Migration of Abraham(various translations)
• MacGregor, Geddes, Gnosis (Wheaton, Illinois, 1979)
• Grant, R.M., Gnosticism and Early Christianity (Columbia University Press, 1966)

🏷️ HASHTAGS

#Gnosticism #Gnosis #Hermeticism #Pleroma #Sophia #Demiurge #Archons #PistisSophia #NagHammadi #Gospels #Scientism #Magic #Astrology #Hylic #Psychic #Pneumatic #FirstMystery #Metacube #Gematria #IesousChristos #Mithras #MagnaMater #Philo #Hippolytus #Carpocrates #Basilides #Valentinus #SimonMagus #ClementOfAlexandria #Irenaeus #TempleOfSet #LeftHandPath #TheRubyTablet #PhilosophyPodcast #WisdomTraditions #AncientPhilosophy #ChristianHeresy #Esotericism #Mysticism #EscapeFromTheCosmos #CosmicPrison #DivineSpark #Gnosis #Knowledge #Salvation #Set #Xeper #AncientWisdom

In this episode, we descend from the chattering marketplace of everyday speech into the silent, luminous realm where thought operates without words—where the mind grasps truth not through argument and proposition, but through the sudden, intuitive recognition of pattern and relationship.

In a world that increasingly confuses opinion with knowledge, expression with understanding, and chatter with thought, do we have the courage to think in silence, or will we retreat into the comfortable prison of our native tongue?

🔗 SOURCES & READING LIST

Essay #156.A: Is Noesis Mystical?

Author: Pat Hardy III° Date: December 15, XXIV HTML Revision: Jan 12, 1998 CE Subject: Philosophy Reading List: 2V, 12B, 12C

📚 RECOMMENDED READING

• Plato, Republic (trans. Allan Bloom) — especially Books VI-VII on the Divided Line and the Form of the Good
• Plato, Meno (trans. G.M.A. Grube) — on recollection and the nature of knowledge
• Aristotle, Metaphysics (trans. W.D. Ross) — on the nature of form and the critique of the Forms
• Aristotle, De Anima (On the Soul) (trans. R.D. Hicks) — on the active intellect
• The Pythagorean Fragments (ed. Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie) — the surviving sayings and doctrines
• Iamblichus, On the Pythagorean Life (trans. Gillian Clark) — the practices of the Pythagorean school
• Proclus, Commentary on Plato's Republic — on the levels of knowledge
• R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz, The Temple of Man — on symbol and the Egyptian mode of thought
• Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality — on the fallacy of misplaced concreteness in language
• Gottlob Frege, On Sense and Reference — the distinction that transformed logic
• Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus — on the limits of language
• Bertrand Russell, The Principles of Mathematics — on logic and language
• Kurt Gödel, On Formally Undecidable Propositions — the limits of formal systems
• Alan Turing, On Computable Numbers — the foundations of artificial intelligence
• Douglas Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid — on formal systems and consciousness
• Aleister Crowley, Magick Without Tears — on the nature of the True Will and intuition
• Julius Evola, The Hermetic Tradition — on symbolism and the royal art
• Frances Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition — on the revival of Pythagorean thought
• Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers — on Pythagoras, Plato, and the Academic tradition

🏷️ HASHTAGS

#Noesis #Philosophy #Pythagoras #Plato #TheoryOfForms #DivineLine #Mathematics #ArtificialLanguages #Calculus #ZenosParadox #SymbolAndSign #GraceHopper #Picosecond #FormalLogic #NaturalLanguage #Reason #Intuition #NonverbalThought #PatternRecognition #Setianism #TempleOfSet #LeftHandPath #TheRubyTablet #PhilosophyPodcast #WisdomTraditions #AncientPhilosophy #GreekPhilosophy #Pythagoreanism #Platonism #Xeper #Initiation #SelfDeification #Mysticism #Rationalism #SymbolicThought #CrypticAphorisms #Academy #MusicTheory #Geometry #Astronomy #RightHandPath #Shamanism #Gurus #Meditation #EliteKnowledge #IntellectualRigor #AleisterCrowley #AleisterCrowley #SchwallerDeLubicz #Symbolism #FormalSystems #Logic #Gödel #Turing #Wittgenstein #Frege #Russell #Hofstadter #Evola #Ficino #Hermeticism

In this episode, we descend from the marble halls of Rome's political philosophy into the shadowed chambers of the individual psyche, where philosophy is no longer the contemplation of the state's constitution but the terrifying confrontation with one's own existence. We explore how existentialism—that most unsettling of philosophical traditions, born in the anguish of the 19th century and forged in the trauma of the 20th—seized the foundations of Western thought and inverted them, declaring that the engine of reality is not the structure of society or the decrees of reason, but the radical freedom of the isolated consciousness, condemned to create meaning in a universe that offers none.

In a world that still celebrates the individual, still struggles with the burden of freedom, and still searches for meaning in a universe that offers none, do we have the courage to become our own creators, or will we retreat into the comfortable illusions of the Right-hand Path?

🎧 ABOUT THE RUBY TABLET

The Ruby Tablet Podcast is a philosophical and spiritual journey through the essays of the Temple of Set, exploring the great traditions of human thought—from ancient Egypt to the present day. Each episode is a deep dive into the ideas that help shape the Self and fan the Black Flame.

🔗 SOURCES & READING LIST:

Essay: Existentialism and Satanism Classification: V2 - 149.EX - 1 Author: Eulit M. Hinson I° Date: July, XXV HTML Conversion: Jan 01, 1998 CE Subject: Philosophy: Existentialism Reading List:

📚 RECOMMENDED READING:

• Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling
• Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
• Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
• Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science
• Martin Heidegger, Being and Time
• Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness
• Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism Is a Humanism
• Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea
• Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus
• Albert Camus, The Stranger
• Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground
• Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis
• Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity
• Karl Jaspers, Philosophy of Existence
• Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception
• Edith Hamilton, The Greek Way (for philosophical context)
• Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy
• Michael A. Aquino, The Temple of Set: The First Ten Years
• Michael A. Aquino, The Church of Satan
• Aleister Crowley, Magick Without Tears
• Anton Szandor LaVey, The Satanic Bible

🏷️ HASHTAGS

#Existentialism #Satanism #Philosophy #Kierkegaard #Nietzsche #Heidegger #Sartre #Xeper #BeingAndNothingness #BeingAndTime #Dasein #BlackFlame #Set #TempleOfSet #GodIsDead #Angst #BadFaith #Authenticity #Freedom #Responsibility #Nausea #Absurdism #Camus #Dostoevsky #Phenomenology #Marius #Sulla #Pompey #JuliusCaesar #RomanRepublic #AncientPhilosophy #GreekPhilosophy #RomanPhilosophy #LeftHandPath #TheRubyTablet #PhilosophyPodcast #WisdomTraditions #ExistentialistPhilosophy #AleisterCrowley #MagickWithoutTears #Crowley #Individualism #SelfCreation #Becoming #Being #Nothingness #EroticCrystallizationInertia #ECI #GoldenMean #Phronesis #Eudaimonia #Setianism #AncientWisdom #Occult #Esotericism #Spirituality #SelfDevelopment #Initiation #Thelema

In this episode, we descend from the symbolic languages of the ancient Egyptian temples into the workshop of the Order of Shuti, where symbolism is no longer the passive inheritance of cultural tradition but the active, conscious tool of individual transformation. We explore how the Grand Master of the Order seized the raw materials of symbolic thought—from the hieroglyphic determinatives of the Nile to the archetypal Tricksters of world mythology, from the complex pantheon of Egyptian Neters to the visceral languages of incense and music—and forged them into a practical, pragmatic system of initiatory technology that asks not "What does this symbol mean?" but "Does this symbol work?"

We ask: In a world that still speaks in symbols, still resonates with archetypes, and still debates the relationship between the conscious will and the unconscious depths, do we have the courage to wield our symbols with intention, or will we retreat into the comfortable passivity of those who are merely affected by them?

🎧 ABOUT THE RUBY TABLET

The Ruby Tablet Podcast is a philosophical and spiritual journey through the essays of the Temple of Set, exploring the great traditions of human thought—from ancient Egypt to the present day. Each episode is a deep dive into the ideas that help shape the Self and fan the Black Flame.

🔗 SOURCES & READING LIST:

Essay: Symbolism Classification: V2 - 135.A - 1 Author: Robert Menschel IV° Date: December, XXIV Publication: Dialogues I.3(1) HTML Revision: Dec 12, 1997 CE Subject: Symbolism Reading List: 2L, 2V

📚 RECOMMENDED READING:

-Barrett, Ronald K., Book of Opening the Way (Key #4). RT A17.2-4.

-Barrett, Ronald K., Stele of Xem. RT A17.28-1.

-Cavendish, Richard, The Black Arts. 4C (TS-3).

-Crowley, Aleister, The Book of Thoth. 9L (TS-4).

-De Lubicz, Isha Schwaller, Her-Bak. 2L (TS-1).

-De Lubicz, Isha Schwaller, Symbol and the Symbolique. 2V (TS-4).

-Fisher, Leonard Everett, Symbol Art: Thirteen Squares, Circles, and Triangles from Around the World. NY: Four Winds Press, MacMillan Publishing Company, 1985.

-Helfman, Elizabeth S., Signs and Symbols Around the World. NY: Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co., 1967.

-Jung, Carl G., Man and his Symbols. Garden City: Doubleday & Co., 1964, 1968. Also NY: Dell Publishing Co., 1968, and London: Aldus Books, 1964.

-Menschel, Robert, Remanifestation: A Symbolic Syntheses, RT A17.36-3.

-Menschel, Robert, Tarot Primer, RT C1D.1L-1.

-Norton, Lynn, Golden Section Tarot Working, Atu XV: The Devil, and The Dialogue. RT C1D.1 (-2, -3, -4).

-Regardie, Israel, 777 and Other Qabalistic Writings of Aleister Crowley. 9M (TS-4).

-Schaefer, Heinrich, Principles of Egyptian Art. 2R (TS-4).

🏷️ HASHTAGS

#Symbolism #OrderOfShuti #TempleOfSet #Xeper #Symbol #Archetype #Jung #Unconscious #Consciousness #Awake #Ouspensky #Plato #PlatonicForms #EgyptianNeters #Set #Shu #Tefnut #Thoth #Trickster #Coyote #Loki #JungianArchetypes #CollectiveUnconscious #Hieroglyphics #EgyptianMythology #LesserBlackMagic #Ritual #Incense #Music #Mantra #Xeper #Remanifestation #Xem #Initiation #LeftHandPath #TheRubyTablet #PhilosophyPodcast #WisdomTraditions #Esoteric #Occult #Magic #Magick #Application #Usefulness #Results #PragmaticMagic #SetianPhilosophy #AncientWisdom #SymbolicLanguage #Metalanguage #Determinatives #Neters #GodForms #Priesthoods #PersonalSymbolism #GroupConsensus #Diversity #Communication #InnateVsLearned #VisceralResponse #Meaning #ConsciousWill