Scientia Occulta (Sensus)

[Fulgurator]

You won't find any of this on the internet - by chance I spent some months studying esoteric teachings that date close to 2000 years ago. The writer originally spoke Phoenician which is a Semitic language close to Hebrew, though he knew fluent Greek and Latin. So, this is about the elements and the senses (and a bit about the paranormal).
The elements are, Ignis, Aqua, Aer, Terra - earth, air, fire and water. The senses are Visus, Tactus, Auditus, Gustatus = sight, touch, hearing and taste.
Each sense connects to an element.
In a totally dark room when a candle is lit, the sense that creates awareness is that of Visus (sight) via the oculi or eyes. So the element Ignis is connected to Visus.
Tactus connects to Terra. That is, we have awareness of solids through touch. Touch connects to the element of earth.
Auditus or hearing creates awareness of sound. Given sound travels through the air we say Auditus = Aer. So, the element of air connects to the sense of hearing.
Aer also connects to the sense of olfactus or smell but here the connection is also to changes of state, that is decay, combustion, dampness. Smell is a sensory mechanism for mutations. When psychics smell odours what happens is the change in the atmosphere is detected by this sense, rather than hearing. In modern psychic terms we call this clarolfaction, which is a modern term but in Latin mutationes cum spiritu commeant means the same.
Finally Gustatus or taste connects to the element of water, which is why the mouth is a liquid sense.
In conclusion, all our senses create awareness via individual connection to the elements.

[Fulgurator]

It's important and also complex to bear in mind the paranormal and psychic sensing people report could be diagnosed as schizophrenia, although there's a difference here. Ancient psychics testified to hearing "voices" and that includes Socrates, teacher of Plato. In this case, the voice was instructive and even accurate. Whereas, Caligula the so-called mad Roman emperor also heard voices but clearly he was mentally troubled and suffered schizophrenia. All psychic sensory phenomena does differ from clinical hallucination but obviously to confuse the two carries risks. The great physicist Nikola Tesla, in fact, heard voices and feared he had lost his sanity. Sometimes a combination is possible - in rare cases mental instability can create occasional psychic experience or savant syndrome. Fortunately, schizophrenia is easy to diagnose for an experienced psychologist.
By the way, Carrie White in the film was based on someone Stephen King had known at his school - a weird and unpopular girl. Carrie in the film is typical Asperger Syndrome but they gave her psychic characteristics too for whatever reason.

[Fulgurator]

I can add to this experience fortunately. I do have clinical symptoms that these days I "manage" quite well. I tend to experience psychic phenomena although these days far less. Such as dreams or occasionally shaking all over when entering a room (if it has some abnormality). I figure it's so rare these days as my mind is now much more logical and a logical mind connects you more to rationality. However, my grandmother was pretty simple and everyday yet she was so gifted in the psychic sense lots of mediums tried to invite her to meetings. My grandad apparently put a stop to it. So, I suppose I inherited something and these days find the subject fascinating.

[quietvoice]

The writer

Does this writer have a name? Did this writer write a book or something that has a title?

[Fulgurator]

Only Apuleius and his writings appear in the Latin library. His native language was phoenician, now extinct. Fortunately, he knew Latin very well. Traditional academics do study the Metamorphoses of Apuleius but tend to not tackle his occult writings. So, I had to struggle to translate maybe half a page per day at most.
Apuleius went on trial for witchcraft but defeated his accusers - not surprising as he was so eloquent. Of course, if a witch, he was a good witch. Still, it amuses me a lot that I'm learning from an accused witch who wrote 2000 years ago. There's a funny side.

[quietvoice]

You won't find any of this on the internet - by chance I spent some months studying esoteric teachings that date close to 2000 years ago.

ME:""Does this writer have a name? Did this writer write a book or something that has a title?""

Only Apuleius and his writings appear in the Latin library.

~
Huh.

https://archive.org/details/goldenassof ... 2/mode/2up

https://www.google.com/search?client=fi ... s+writings

[Fulgurator]

The Metamorphoses or Golden Ass is the usual choice in departments and I've not yet tackled it. The other texts which I have been grinding through aren't as popular but more theoretically occult. One of these has been translated by Thomas Taylor (a pagan) in the 18th century, I think. I used that sometimes to confirm my own translations.
It's important to understand an English translation isn't quite the same as the original language and not everybody agrees on the sense. Not everybody agrees on the meaning of the teachings either.

[Fulgurator]

Why translations from ancient language to English are hard. Here's a Taylor translation of a sample paragraph. It's easier somehow in the original language.


"they produce by their divine revolutions the most orderly and eternal transitions; by a various form of convolution indeed, but with a celerity perpetually equable and the same, representing, through an admirable vicissitude, at one time progressions, and at another regressions, according to the position, curvature, and obliquity of their circle."

[Fulgurator]

According to my conclusions, knowledge is innate. It's inside each person. We also all have access to the high consciousness which in most people is revealed by sense of guilt. So, gnosis (knowledge) is digging deep to open up the knowledge within. It makes more sense too than trying to pick one religion from another - none of them created peace but mostly war and conflict. When you read ancient occult philosophy the understanding isn't just academic - you have to open up to it. Neither is it proven. We can't prove unseen forces exist in a spiritual dimension but we can seek understanding. The main priority is to be able to observe and listen - that's why some meditate. As far as psychology, the ancients probably knew our modern diagnostics but they also had ideas on treatments, nutrition and herbs.
On pyramids I recently found the pyramid has a certain numerical value and also represents fire.

[Fulgurator]

I appear to be doing quite well in this drive to crack Latin. The "Apology" of Apuleius only appears to have a 1905 or very old translations. This was his defence from a charge of witchcraft - which he won. Looking at the text, I got familiar enough with his style to grasp bits of it without a dictionary. So at some point I could translate it. The other text on platonism has been translated by T. Taylor but that was 1800 and something. When comparing, I had most of the text interpreted the same as Taylor but weird to think I'm following in his footsteps.
What happens is all the departments and faculties only ever do the Golden Ass and, even then, most students are fed the the usual traditional writers. If you join a forum like Textkit the posters are pretty advanced but most tend to tackle traditional writers. Besides that, esoteric philosophy is something I tend to feel so that helps me understand these writings. Later occultists like Helena Blavatskiy seem to have held similar ideas. Of course, occult here is good and nothing to do with the darker side. It also comes close to gnosticism - the da vinci code type.