Psychology’s Primitive Tongues -

 

A Thesaurus of Occult Linguistics

 

Abstract, Version 05.8

 

           I should be clear at the beginning that the point of view taken in this
analysis will not be that of unquestioning belief in these systems. Neither does
my use of the term “psychology” imply any positive correlation between the
acceptance of such beliefs and mental health. Instead, I wish to ask what the
structure and content of these systems, together with their broad use and
attractiveness or popular acceptance, can tell us about the human mind.

           Regardless of the metaphysical "truth" of Kabbalah (Jewish tradition),
Qabalah (Hermetic or Western Mystery tradition), Astrology, Tarot and the
Yi,jing, the projections we make with our minds upon the cosmos can per-
haps tell us more about our minds than about the cosmos. But, as mirror
images, sometimes we need to understand them upside down or in reverse
order, as existential instead of essentialistic. Metaphysics is irrelevant to this
investigation. I should also clarify that when I speak of psychology I’m prob-
ably leaning towards a blend of neuroscience, evolutionary psychology and
meme theory. If I use the word archetype it’s more likely to refer to a neural
predisposition to organize certain perceptions and behaviors around specific
needs we have as biological entities belonging to families and social groups of
mammals and primates. I do not see Platonic forms.

           Astrology, to illustrate, has developed for three millenia in a consultant-
to-client situation, where the client was usually concerned about his identity
in relation to the world and its changes. Whatever the excuse was that made
him credulous and receptive to advice from his counselor, the language of
astrology had to develop a large set of associations to psychological states
and processes (planets as parts of the psyche, etc). Over a very long time. Yet
the real beneficiary of this was the astrologer more than his client. The client
had to learn about his particular one-twelfth of the broader human potential,
while the astrologer had to understand and integrate the whole scope of the
system. He had to be fluent in the language.

           I will be developing each system as a language, with grammar, syntax
and vocabulary, as a handbook more for the professional than for general
consumption. I am going to try to remain true to the root disciplines, even
though there may be large portions of a discipline which I might actually
term “silly”. We humans seem wired to find meanings in nature (human
meanings when we can) and we will make them up if we fail. We can find cos-
mic significance in chicken entrails and tea leaves. The accidental arrange-
ment of the letters of our various alphabets and the random assignments of
points in time to arbitrary human calendars become significant numerolog-
ical systems. The fact that that we have ten fingers may be the only reason
that the number ten is such a significant number base for us. There is such a
thing as finding too much meaning - and one of its names is “paranoia”. It is,
however significant that when pressed to name “the six things”, many widely
separated cultures often divide the world along similar lines. This coincidence
may have a common human substatum.

 

           This whole project might run about a thousand pages, plus another
thousand counting the Yi as a chapter.