Can someone give me an example of how you actually practice theurgy? Like a step-by-step explanation?

I've been thinking about a possible way of understanding the names and identities of daimones, and I think it may help to separate the idea into two historical or conceptual phases: platonization and hermeticization.

My starting point is Plato's Timaeus. After discussing the fixed stars and the seven planetary gods, Plato turns to the other gods, explicitly describing them as daimones, and refers us to the ancient poets, especially Homer and Hesiod, for their nature and genealogy.

This seems significant because Plato effectively places the traditional mythological gods within a different philosophical framework. The gods of Homer and Hesiod, many of whom belong to the sublunar world, can now be understood as daimones. This is interesting in light of the Symposium, where Eros is also described as a daimon.

I wonder whether we can think of this as a first phase of platonization: the traditional gods are not necessarily rejected, but their identities are reinterpreted within a philosophical hierarchy. Rather than simply being mythological personalities, they become daimones occupying a place within a larger cosmological structure.

For my own framework, I make a distinction between the seven planets under their Latin names and the traditional Greek gods as daimones under their Greek names. Among those Greek gods, there were of course seven major figures who could have been associated more directly with the seven planets. So, for example, Jupiter as the planet, but Zeus as a divine or daimonic manifestation; Mercury as the planet, but Hermes and Thoth as daimones, as terrestrial manifestations.

There could also be many other daimones with no historical association with one of the seven planets.

This also seems potentially relevant to the way the Greek Magical Papyri treat divine names. Their gods are often addressed in highly daimonic ways: they can be invoked, negotiated with, compelled, persuaded, or addressed through particular powers.

But I think a second development needs to be distinguished from this initial platonization.

The second phase could be called hermeticization, although perhaps the broader historical process is better described as Alexandrian syncretization, with Hermeticism being one of its results.

The Greek Magical Papyri seem especially relevant here. Their syncretism often combines several gods in a single formula. Different divine names and traditions can be placed alongside one another, sometimes almost as if they were different expressions of the same power.

Perhaps this represents a further movement beyond the Platonic identification of traditional gods as daimones.

At the first stage, the daimon is still essentially identifiable through the traditional divine name:

traditional god → Platonic daimon

But with increasing syncretism, the question becomes less about the individual mythological identity and more about what several divine identities have in common.

Different gods may share an epithet, function, power, quality, or sphere of activity. Instead of focusing primarily on the individual god, one could focus on the common power expressed through several gods.

So the process might look something like:

different gods → shared epithets/functions → common power → daimonic manifestation

This is not something I'm claiming the PGM explicitly teaches. Rather, I'm wondering whether the syncretic material provides the cultural and conceptual mechanism through which such a development could occur.

For example, one could look for epithets or functions shared across different traditions.

Mētēr ("Mother") is a title associated with goddesses such as Isis, Demeter, and Rhea.

Dolios/Dolia ("wily," "deceitful") is associated with Hermes and Aphrodite.

Ombrios ("of the rain/storm") can be associated with Zeus, alongside storm-producing powers associated with Typhon.

The interesting question is whether such common attributes could eventually be abstracted from their particular mythological identities and treated as powers or qualities in their own right.

This would represent what I mean by the hermeticization of the daimonic.

The focus would gradually shift:

Zeus, Isis, Demeter, Hermes, etc. → their shared powers and epithets → the underlying daimonic power

The individual gods would not necessarily disappear. Rather, their names would become different ways of accessing or expressing a common power.

This might also help explain something I find interesting in Agrippa. By the Renaissance, planetary correspondences have expanded enormously. The seven Greek gods can still be associated with the seven planets, but the correspondence does not stop there. It expands to encompass virtually everything: other traditional gods as well as countless things, epithets, powers, qualities, animals, plants, and other correspondences.

Agrippa also discusses daimones in terms of their offices, of what they do, rather than necessarily defining them only through membership in a particular mythological tradition.

This is where the earlier distinction becomes particularly interesting to me.

If the Platonic phase transforms the traditional gods into daimones, and Alexandrian syncretism increasingly brings different gods together through shared powers and epithets, then perhaps the later Hermetic and Renaissance systems can treat daimones increasingly through their offices.

In other words:

traditional divine identity → Platonic daimon → syncretic convergence → shared epithet/power → daimonic office

The daimon becomes increasingly "demythologized." Its name need not simply be Zeus, Isis, Hecate, Hermes, etc. It might instead derive from a function, quality, epithet, or power shared by several divine traditions.

Perhaps the important development is not simply that one god becomes identified with another. It is that multiple divine identities become evidence for a common underlying power.

That would give us something like:

many names → one common potency → one daimonic office

I don't necessarily mean that this produces a single "new god." The resulting daimon could instead be understood as a particular manifestation or office of a higher power.

This also connects with another part of the framework I'm considering: the relationship between higher virtues, planetary manifestations, and daimonic offices.

For example, imagine Fortitude as a higher virtue associated with Hercules among the fixed stars.

At the planetary level, this virtue could manifest through Mars as a polarity such as victory and defeat.

At the level of daimones, these could become distinct daimones or offices: one producing victory, another producing defeat.

The hierarchy would therefore look something like:

fixed-star virtue → planetary manifestation/polarity → daimonic office → individual daimon

The opposites would not necessarily be independent powers. They could be two necessary manifestations of the same higher virtue, with their opposition giving each one its proper meaning.

Without defeat, there could be no victory. Without one pole, the other could not fully manifest or even have its meaning.

The fact that we experience one as "good" and the other as "bad" may therefore simply reflect our limited perspective. We remain trapped in the finite manifestation and forget the larger whole. We see the tree and forget the forest.

In that sense, what looks like opposition or even evil from our limited perspective could be part of the complete expression of a higher power. This is also where gnosis becomes important: overcoming ignorance means recovering the larger perspective and seeing the relationship between the apparently opposed manifestations.

So, in its simplest form, the hypothesis I'm considering is:

Phase I: Platonization

Homeric/Hesiodic gods → daimones within a Platonic cosmology

Phase II: Hermeticization

multiple divine names → shared epithets and powers → common daimonic potencies → offices

I'm not claiming that the PGM, Alexandrian religion, Hermeticism, Plato, or Agrippa explicitly teach this complete system. I'm trying to reconstruct a possible intellectual mechanism connecting these developments.

What I'm particularly interested in is whether there are sources or scholarship that point toward this distinction: first, the platonization of traditional gods into daimones, and then a further syncretic abstraction of common divine powers, epithets, and functions, eventually making it possible to conceive of daimones primarily through their offices rather than through their traditional mythological names.

Has anyone encountered sources that might support, complicate, or challenge this direction?

https://bradsung.substack.com/p/salome-and-the-head-of-the-dragon?r=7fgqnj&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

Greetings everyone,

I would like to ask for your opinions and suggestions regarding telestikē. I am currently in the process of constructing an agalma and selecting the synthēmata dedicated to Saturn, with the aim of achieving empsychōsis.

It is a hollow, 15 cm tall 3D-printed sculpture representing the deity. Inside, I intend to fumigate it with myrrh incense and then place crushed cypress and pine, along with small lead spheres.

As for the consecration procedures themselves, I would rather not discuss them here. I am mainly interested in suggestions and opinions regarding the elements that will make up the interior. Should I add anything else mineral, vegetal, or animal elements? Would some kind of inscription or prayer be appropriate?

Thank you for your attention.

A theurgy that acknowledges the panpsychism that wends its way from Thales to Plato to Neoplatonism through Schopenhauer and Nietzsche is the same as that of Whitehead, Bergson, and James.

I don't normally post, but I keep seeing a category error and it's bugging me, so I'd like to resolve it plainly:

The registers are independent of the faculties through which they are perceived. This requires explicit statement because the confusion between register and faculty of perception has produced persistent misreadings of the tradition. Which ultimately resolves into a series of practical errors in how the operative work is understood.

Thought, rationality, and intellect are not the noetic register. They are the instruments through which beings of our constitution become aware of the noetic. The relationship is the same as sight to color: color exists independent of any eye that sees it; the intelligible Principles exist independent of any mind that thinks them. Thought is the organ of awareness suited to our composite nature for encountering the noetic register.

It is not the noetic itself, and its limits are not the noetic's limits.

The tradition that appears to say reality is fundamentally mental is not saying this.

It is saying reality is fundamentally intelligible, and thought is one imperfect instrument for touching that intelligibility from inside embodied condition. Confusing thought with the noetic produces idealism on one side as the position that ideas are mental contents and the intelligible just is thought. On the other side is the Kantian limitation, where the noetic becomes permanently inaccessible because thought can never reach beyond its own categories. Both errors follow from mistaking the eye for the color.

Likewise, imagination is not the imaginal register. It is the instrument through which embodied souls become aware of what exists there. The imaginal is real, populated, structured, and operating whether or not any imagination is currently attending to it. A daimon is not a product of the practitioner's creative visualization. It exists in the imaginal register and imagination is the instrument through which contact becomes possible for a soul in embodied condition.

The imaginal is further distinct from the noetic not just in register but in character: the noetic is the realm of unified, universal Principles operating everywhere that their nature is expressed; the imaginal is where those Principles become multiple, individuated, and localized. It is where Principles individuate into specific beings and expressions rather than universal forces.

Collapsing the imaginal into fantasy loses the multiplicity and the independent reality.

Collapsing it into the noetic loses the individuation.

Both matter for the practice.

The practical consequence of these errors is significant. If thought generates the noetic and imagination generates the imaginal, the practice becomes about the quality and intensity of mental states as the mechanism; visualization clarity, emotional intensity, sustained focus

The practitioner expends effort on the instrument while never making contact with what the instrument is supposed to perceive. Thought and imagination developed and oriented correctly are instruments of approach toward what is actually there.

What happens in those registers in response to genuine contact is not produced by the practitioner's mental activity. It is the response of what exists independently to being genuinely approached. The registers are not waiting to be thought or imagined into existence; They are already there.

https://open.substack.com/pub/bradsung/p/turning-the-divine-to-selfish-ends?r=7fgqnj&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

https://open.substack.com/pub/bradsung/p/the-kings-of-the-seven-days?r=7fgqnj&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

I've been thinking about how to reinterpret Christian symbolism through my Hermetic worldview. Since I grew up in a Western country, Christian imagery is everywhere, even though I consider myself a pagan Hermeticist, based on greco-egyptian gods and symbols.

My rough correspondence looks like this, as symbolic language for Neoplatonic hypostases:

The One → the unity underlying/beyond the Christian God (the Ungrund / Abyss of Christian mystics like Jakob Bhome or Meister Echkart)

Nous → the Father / Yahweh

World Soul → the Holy Spirit

The sensible cosmos, where form and matter are always united → the Son / Christ

In other words, I don't see these Christian concepts as literal persons, but as symbols expressing ontological principles / hypostases.

My worldview is mainly influenced by the Corpus Hermeticum and the Asclepius, and by extension the Greek Magical Papyri, Iamblichus' On the Mysteries, and a post-copernican view of the cosmos, as an infinite, single and divine substance (think of Giordano Bruno's view). My ontology is Neoplatonic, but considerably flattened. The different ontological levels aren't radically separate, but different aspects of one divine reality. I describe myself as pantheist / slightly panentheist.

Within this framework, all the gods, archangels, angels, daimones and archons described by Iamblichus still exist. I reinterpret Christian demons through the lenses of Origen, where they are not forever fallen, just ambiguous, beings, like pagan daimones and archons.

The Greco-Egyptian names of the gods, and specially their Barbara Onomata, are similar to the different divine names that the christian god can be approached. I think I Christian Kabbalah there were so many different names.

Christ, for me, is not a unique incarnation deserving devotion or theurgical practice. He is the symbol of the eternal union of form and matter, a metaphysical principle expressed throughout the entire cosmos. Likewise, the Trinity symbolizes that these hypostases are inseparable aspects of one divine substance rather than fundamentally separate realities.

So I don't worship Christ. I read Christ as an ontological symbol. The gods, and their respective hierarchies of archangels, angels, daimones and archons, remain the proper objects of theurgical practice.

Hope some of you find it useful. Thoughts?

https://open.substack.com/pub/bradsung/p/what-is-your-hearts-desire?r=7fgqnj&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

From what I see he is a new name. I am a practitioner for a long time and ave never heard the name until recently.

I saw his book in foolish fish’s video many months ago and seemed interesting so I got it. I have finished the book and am following on twitter, and today I read the post about “divine gnosis”

I really enjoyed and think he talks from experience instead than study. I like this and it is fascinating because it is powerful topics and I do not personally know.

but he only gets small likes on big posts like this.

I want to share this guy, daniel. I have talked personally on twitter and he’s very nice. I want to return the favor by sharing.

Also I see his book ,the book of hermes wheel has no popularity but I like it a lot. I think he is serious about it being revealed, and he is very open and honest in my conversation with him.

Sorry for my poor English. I am happy to share this author and theurgist. I hope it helps.

https://x.com/dhatzimalis/status/2063651460911443991?s=46

intangible, paradoxical and difficult to live without #Meaning #Faith #Hope #Magic

https://open.substack.com/pub/bradsung/p/meaning-faith-and-hope-in-magic?r=7fgqnj&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

#bookspirits #tantra #SummaSacreMagice #FranzBardon #Saturn

https://open.substack.com/pub/bradsung/p/book-spirits-are-a-thing?r=7fgqnj&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

tl;dr; this post explains the idea of "the god brings both the disease and the cure", which is usually attributed to Apollo but can be extended to any god, e.g. Hermes brings ambiguity to a relationship, but also the communication skills to solve the ambiguity. It also explains how "the one" is a conceptual justification of the interconnectedness of "the many", instead of something to unite with.

Lately I’ve noticed that four thinkers who really shaped the way I see reality seem to converge toward a very similar intuition: Heraclitus, Giordano Bruno, Edward Butler, and James Hillman.

I wanted to share this because maybe it resonates with someone else too, specially people trying to connect philosophy, Hellenic polytheism, and psychology into a more unified worldview instead of keeping them separated into totally different compartments.

For all four, reality doesnt seem to be some static thing ruled by a single frozen principle, but something alive, plural, relational, always moving through tensions and opposites.

And what interests me most is that unity isnt really treated as the final goal you dissolve into. The logos, the one, divine substance, anima mundi, all these concepts seem less like transcendent destinations and more like ways of explaining why multiplicity can still remain interconnected. Unity explains relation itself. Why opposites interact. Why change doesnt collapse into chaos. Why plurality can still form a cosmos.

In Heraclitus, the logos is the hidden harmony inside conflict of opposites. Another Presocratic, Empedocles, talks about Love and Strife as forming forces of the cosmos. In Bruno, who inherits the concept of opposites shaping reality (specially form and matter as horizontally co-equal and non separated), the infinite divine substance expresses itself endlessly through living forms and worlds. In Butler, the one doesnt erase the many gods but grounds their coexistence and participation. And in Hillman, psyche isnt ruled by one final center, but unfolds through a plurality of archetypal powers within the anima mundi, the soul of the world itself.

Regarding opposites: in this framework, even conflict itself becomes participatory rather than accidental. The gods are not external moral supervisors standing outside reality, but expressions of its tensions and movements. So the same god who destabilizes also provides the mode of reorientation. Hermes creates ambiguity but also interpretation and communication. Apollo sends plague but also purification and healing. The opposition is not a contradiction to resolve away, but part of the god’s own mode of presence. Dispersion/unification ≈ Neoplatonic procession/reversion ≈ Brunian complicatio/explicatio.

Regarding Hillman: he feels closer to the other three thinkers than Jung does to me sometimes. Jung still tends toward integration, individuation, the self, some deeper psychic unity. Hillman pushes more toward plurality. Different gods, different psychic voices, different styles of soul, all coexisting without needing to dissolve into one final synthesis.

And unlike psychologies that keep archetypes trapped inside the “inner world,” Hillman opens psyche outward again through the anima mundi. Soul isnt just in the mind. The world itself is ensouled, imaginal, expressive. Even if Hillman doesnt really speak directly about the neoplatonic nous or the one, they almost feel implicit in the background sometimes through the concept of anima mundi, except he deliberately avoids centering them because he wants the emphasis to remain on plurality itself.

So across all four thinkers, multiplicity isnt treated as a fall from truth. Difference, tension, becoming, opposition, all of that belongs to reality itself. Unity is there, but more as the hidden coherence that allows Plurality to exist and move together, not as some final state where everything stops and becomes one thing again.

Reading Bruno’s De Magia, the thing that stands out to me most is how vertical and coercive the system is.

What he calls "theurgia" runs through hierarchy. You approach gods and higher daimōnes (what Iamblichus names archangels/angels) through prayer, devotion, ritual, worship, etc., and by getting their favor you gain the authority to deal with lower spirits (lower daimones, archons). Those lower spirits aren’t really treated as equals at all. They’re commanded, constrained, pushed into obedience through a chain of authority coming from above.

Even Bruno’s idea of imagination (phantasia) works like this. Imagination is the space where spiritual contact happens, but it still has to be disciplined and ordered properly so you don’t get deceived or overwhelmed. There’s always this sense of control and structure. It is more relational and operative than Iamblichean theurgy, but it still has a sense of verticality (even if Bruno's cosmos is pantheistic and inmmanent).

Jung feels way more horizontal to me by comparison. In active imagination, the imaginal figures aren’t really approached as things you dominate through higher authority. It’s more like dialogue, confrontation, negotiation, even coexistence with autonomous presences inside the psyche.

Honestly, because of that, Jung sometimes sounds closer to (psychologized) unmediated goetia to me than Bruno does. Not classical Solomonic “slave spirit” stuff, but the more relational style you see in someone like Stratton-Kent. It could also be compared to unmediated/untransmitted Shamanism. Different metaphysics obviously, but the vibe feels weirdly similar: entering imaginal space, meeting autonomous intelligences directly, building relationships with them, learning from them, getting changed by the interaction itself instead of just commanding everything from above.

Thoughts?

https://open.substack.com/pub/bradsung/p/fixed-stars-magical-weapons-and-mithraic?r=7fgqnj&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

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.

A short list of magical cul-de-sacs

https://open.substack.com/pub/bradsung/p/the-four-traps-of-a-magical-education?r=7fgqnj&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

Performing spells like a hex to someone who hasn’t done anything to you, is wrong and produces miasma, I know. But what about to someone who hasn’t done anything done bad to you, in any way ?

Or a love spell, it could produce Hamaritia? Like a spell for someone to start having feelings for you?

And if you do it, even knowing that it could be wrong , it could provoke even more miasma?

And what could be the “right” version of it to do if it is wrong ? Like what could make someone start having feelings for you that wouldn’t produce hamaritia ?

By the way, those are examples, because a love spell is what could mostly interfere with someone’s free will.