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esowteric.bsky.social
Esowteric
@esowteric.bsky.social
810 followers 590 following 4.4K posts
Interested in Illuminationism; the Sufi Way; Western tradition; Renaissance; Romanticism; Idealism; Panpsychism; Imagination; contemporary depth psychology; resistance; etc.

Author of mystical adventure and soft scifi. Blog: mystical-faction.blogspot.com
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esowteric.bsky.social
Esowteric @esowteric.bsky.social · Dec 19
“Beyond a Shadow of a Doubt” and “The Dissidents (Extended 2025): A novel” are freely available at the Internet Archive's library & in full at the FB group Mystical Faction.

Links in comments.

#PostTrust #PostTruth #Materialism #Disenchantment #Resistance #Underground #Survival #Dystopia #DarkAges
Front covers of The Dissidents and Beyond a Shadow of a Doubt, by H.M. Forester.
esowteric.bsky.social
“In my practice, I've seen how people have allowed their humanity to drain away. Only it happened slowly instead of all at once. They didn't seem to mind... All of us – a little bit – we harden our hearts, grow callous ...”

~ Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956 film).
Image containing a text quotation. The text, from Invasion of the Bodysnatchers (1956 film), reads: Humanity Draining Away: Dr. Miles J. Bennell: “In my practice, I've seen how people have allowed their humanity to drain away. Only it happened slowly instead of all at once. They didn't seem to mind... All of us – a little bit – we harden our hearts, grow callous. Only when we have to fight to stay human do we realize how precious it is to us, how dear.”
February 8, 2026 at 10:39 AM
esowteric.bsky.social
“Some want to turn the clock back, harkening back to some golden age of nostalgia, when women, children, the lower class, parishioners, and people of other races and creeds knew their place; not the 1950s, but further ...”

~ H.M. Forester, Preface to Beyond a Shadow of a Doubt.
Image containing a text quotation, with a man in manacles in the bottom left-hand corner. The text, from H.M. Forester, Preface to Beyond a Shadow of a Doubt, reads: An Unholy Vision: “Some want to turn the clock back, harkening back to some golden age of nostalgia, when women, children, the lower class, parishioners, and people of other races and creeds knew their place; not back to the 1950s, but further back: to Dickensian times and to (corporate) feudal fiefdom. They want to wind the clock back to a time before the hard-won battles for civil rights, social reforms, and worker representation. A time long, long before the ‘woke virus’, ‘illegal immigrants’, and gender identity, when life was more conservative and white lives mattered; though with a new, fundamentalist, Christian nationalist (or Islamist, or ultra-Zionist, or even atheist) and isolationist twist. And some will go to any lengths – and I do mean any desperate, violent, draconian lengths – to bring this vile and unholy vision about.”
February 7, 2026 at 10:07 AM
esowteric.bsky.social
“The purpose of learning to work with the unconscious is not just to resolve our conflicts or deal with our neuroses. We find there a deep source of renewal, growth, strength, and wisdom. We connect with the source of our evolving character ...”

~ Robert A. Johnson.
Image containing a text quotation. The text, from Robert A. Johnson, Inner Work: Using Dreams and Active Imagination for Personal Growth, reads: Our Inner Resources: “The purpose of learning to work with the unconscious is not just to resolve our conflicts or deal with our neuroses. We find there a deep source of renewal, growth, strength, and wisdom. We connect with the source of our evolving character; we cooperate with the process whereby we bring the total self together; we learn to tap that rich lode of energy and intelligence that waits within.”
February 7, 2026 at 9:45 AM
esowteric.bsky.social
“Reflecting ‘On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings’, [William] James implied that the malady was an inability to appreciate some invisible but magnanimous order, some dimension of being that eludes without invalidating scientific or rational investigation.”

~ Eugene McCarraher.
Image: Through the darkness into the light (22157238549) / See1,Do1,Teach1 / Wikimedia Commons (orig Flickr) / CC BY 2.0. A winding path made with spaced-out crazy paving stones threads its way, with a stone wall to the left, through the shade of low trees, toward the light.
February 6, 2026 at 6:06 PM
esowteric.bsky.social
“When the time comes for the ego to set forth on its journey towards wholeness, strange and paradoxical things happen; fate chooses strange emissaries. But when we grow wiser we learn that the disasters of life are often the genius of the unconscious ...”

~ Robert A. Johnson, We.
Image containing a text quotation, with two dark clouds, a bolt of lightning, and raindrops in the upper right-hand corner. The text, from Robert A. Johnson, We: Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love, reads: When Disaster Strikes: “When the time comes for the ego to set forth on its journey towards wholeness, strange and paradoxical things happen; fate chooses strange emissaries. But when we grow wiser we learn that the disasters of life are often the genius of the unconscious, forcing our egos into a new experience of the self.”
February 6, 2026 at 9:13 AM
esowteric.bsky.social
The 7 Levels of the Ego: A Sufi Map of Death and Awakening

Video (25 min 32 sec).

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zq26...

#SufiWay #SufiPath #Sufism #Sufis #Nafs #CommandingSelf #Ego #Self #Individuation #Awakening #DepthPsychology
The 7 Levels of the Ego — A Sufi Map of Death and Awakening
YouTube video by The Alchemist’s Heart
www.youtube.com
February 5, 2026 at 12:00 PM
esowteric.bsky.social
“[N]othing short of super-extraordinary measures must be taken to ensure that we make it through this interregnum and ensure our survival and that of the natural world we inhabit.”

~ Preface to H.M. Forester, Beyond a Shadow of a Doubt. #Free #eBook

esowteric.vivaldi.net/2026/01/15/a...
A Little Something for Your Ark, Beyond a Shadow of a Doubt
In these increasingly dire times we have plenty of warners, but what we desperately need right now are more arks. As Michael Ventura wrote: “[A]ll of this passing things on, in all its forms…
esowteric.vivaldi.net
February 5, 2026 at 9:34 AM
esowteric.bsky.social
“Here is the ancient floor,
Footworn and hollowed and thin,
Here was the former door
Where the dead feet walked in ...”

~ Thomas Hardy, “The Self-Unseeing”.
An image containing a poem, with a grey-roofed, yellow house and some trees and bushes in the bottom right-hand corner. The poem, Thomas Hardy's, “The Self-Unseeing”, reads: Here is the ancient floor, Footworn and hollowed and thin, Here was the former door Where the dead feet walked in. . She sat here in her chair, Smiling into the fire; He who played stood there, Bowing it higher and higher. . Childlike, I danced in a dream; Blessings emblazoned that day; Everything glowed with a gleam; Yet we were looking away!
February 5, 2026 at 9:25 AM
esowteric.bsky.social
“Einstein said that we cannot solve a problem from the level of consciousness that created it. We have to create the new context in which the solution to a problem can appear ... the idea that consciousness ... is the ground of reality ...” ~ Anne Baring, The Dream of the Cosmos.
An image containing a text quotation, with a white lotus blossom and green leaves in the lower left-hand corner. The text, from Anne Baring, The Dream of the Cosmos: A Quest for the Soul, reads: The Ground of Being: “Einstein said that we cannot solve a problem from the level of consciousness that created it. We have to create the new context in which the solution to a problem can appear. The new context to which the formidable discoveries of science may be aligned is the idea that consciousness rather than matter is the ground of reality and the creative force that has brought the universe into being. Like the prince in the fairy tale of the Sleeping Beauty, this idea is opening a way through the hedge of thorns thrown up by centuries of entrenched beliefs, whether religious or scientific. It has the power to awaken our soul, nurture our imagination, and arouse in us a deeper capacity for relationship with each other and our planetary home.”
February 4, 2026 at 8:30 PM
esowteric.bsky.social
“It is the mythic experience, the mythic imagination that opens, reveals depth and mystery, which places the human in the context of the nonhuman, and so, forces retreat, humility, and awe, in the presence of spaces beyond our will.”

~ Tom Cheetham, Green Man, Earth Angel.
La Primavera / Sandro Botticelli (1445–1510) / Wikimedia Commons / Public domain. Botticelli’s La Primavera is an early Renaissance work featuring mythological figures like Venus, Cupid, Mercury, and Flora, and the overall theme of the painting is marriage and fertility.
February 4, 2026 at 9:22 AM
esowteric.bsky.social
Fate
~~~
“[A]s Jung put it in terms that chill me always, “What is denied inwardly will come to us in the outer world, and we call it fate.”

~ James Hollis, Living Between Worlds.

Image: Fate / Alphonse Mucha (1860–1939) / Wikimedia Commons / Public domain.
Fate, a painting by Alphonse Mucha in 1920, in art nouveau (modern) style. It depicts a woman in a long flowing dress with billowing sleeves, wearing a shawl over her head and shoulders, and clutching what looks like a small bowl or glass in her left hand while her right forearm and hand are raised, showing her palm.
February 3, 2026 at 8:57 PM
esowteric.bsky.social
1/4 “Beyond a Shadow of a Doubt” and “The Dissidents (Extended 2025): A novel” are freely available at the Internet Archive's library & in full at the FB group Mystical Faction.

Links in comments.

#PostTrust #PostTruth #Materialism #Disenchantment #Resistance #Underground
Front covers of The Dissidents and Beyond a Shadow of a Doubt, by H.M. Forester.
February 3, 2026 at 8:57 PM
esowteric.bsky.social
The Hidden Truth of the World
~~~~~~~
“The ultimate, hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently.”

~ David Graeber, The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy.
Image containing a text quotation, with a small tree with leaves in many colours in the lower left-hand corner. The text, from David Graeber, The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy, reads: The Hidden Truth of the World: “The ultimate, hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently.”
February 3, 2026 at 6:26 PM
esowteric.bsky.social
“Losing one's grip on reality can happen not only to individuals, but collectively as well. For instance, regressive ideological possession demonstrates how whole groups of people ... can also lose their grip on reality and kill off their surroundings in the process ...”

~ Marie-Louise von Franz.
An image containing a text quotation, with a stylised green virus with bulbous protrusions in the lower right-hand corner. The text, from Marie-Louise von Franz, Archetypal Patterns in Fairy Tales, reads: Losing One's Grip: “Losing one's grip on reality can happen not only to individuals, but collectively as well. For instance, regressive ideological possession demonstrates how whole groups of people with some childish fantasy of bringing heaven to earth can also lose their grip on reality and kill off their surroundings in the process. You see this quite clearly in the development of the Nazi movement. The "blessed" Fuhrer, and with him the whole circle of Nazi leaders, became more and more unreal. They lost their grip on reality and that, naturally, led to their downfall. That is what happens in the long run to all such movements: they slowly lose their grip on reality and have to defend their ideal by more and more criminal means, until finally they go completely off the rails.”
February 3, 2026 at 9:47 AM
esowteric.bsky.social
Can't Get You Out of My Head
~~~~~~~
Adam Curtis's 2021 follow-up to HyperNormalisation, exploring how the world has become even more surreal, with a focus on the collapse of shared reality and the rise of digital control. Playlist in six parts:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-DM...
Can't Get You Out of My Head - Part 1: Bloodshed on Wolf Mountain
YouTube video by Umar Khan
www.youtube.com
February 2, 2026 at 6:18 PM
esowteric.bsky.social
I am the voice speaking softly.
I exist from the first.
I dwell within the Silence,
Within the immeasurable Silence.
I descended to the midst of the underworld
And I shone down upon the darkness ...

~ From The Trimorphic Protennoia, quoted in Anne Baring, The Dream of the Cosmos.
Image containing a text quotation, with the small figure of a woman sensing an aroma in the air, in the bottom left-hand corner. the text, from The Trimorphic Protennoia, The Nag Hammadi Library, edited by James M. Robinson and E.J. Brill, reads: I am the voice speaking softly. I exist from the first. I dwell within the Silence, Within the immeasurable Silence. I descended to the midst of the underworld And I shone down upon the darkness. It is I who poured forth the Water. I am the one hidden within Radiant Waters... I am the Image of the Invisible Spirit. I am the Womb that gives shape to the All By giving birth to the Light that shines in splendour.
February 2, 2026 at 9:47 AM
esowteric.bsky.social
HyperNormalisation | In the film Curtis argues that since the 1970s, governments, financiers, and technological utopians have given up on the complex "real world" and instead built a simple "fake world" ...

Video gold (2 hr 46 min).

www.youtube.com/watch?v=yS_c...
HyperNormalisation by Adam Curtis HD Full [2016] [Subs]
YouTube video by L33T GUY
www.youtube.com
February 2, 2026 at 9:27 AM
esowteric.bsky.social
“The passing from the "black Light," from the "luminous Night" to the brilliance of the emerald vision will be a sign, according to Semnani, of the completed growth of the subtle organism, the "resurrection body" ...”

~ Henry Corbin, The Man of Light in Iranian Sufism.
An image containing a text quotation, with the grey silhouette of a woman, arms outstretched in joy, in the bottom left-hand corner. The text, from Henry Corbin, The Man of Light in Iranian Sufism, reads: “... The passing from the "black Light," from the "luminous Night" [or midnight sun] to the brilliance of the emerald vision will be a sign, according to Semnani, of the completed growth of the subtle organism, the "resurrection body" hidden in the visible physical body. Exactly here the connection between the experience of colored photisms and the "physiology of the man of light" is unveiled: the seven subtle organs (latifa), the seven centers typifying the Abodes of the seven great prophets in the man of light. The growth of the man of light thus recapitulates inwardly the whole cycle of Prophecy.”
February 2, 2026 at 9:16 AM
esowteric.bsky.social
“What was the point of riches, Novalis asked, if they simply made the globe spin ever faster. To romanticise the world, he suggested, is to make us see the magic and wonder of the world. The mission was to see the extraordinary in the ordinary.”

~ Andrea Wulf, Magnificent Rebels.
Image containing a text quotation, with a bouquet of bright yellow and orange flowers in the lower left-hand corner. The text, from Andrea Wulf, Magnificent Rebels: The First Romantics and the Invention of the Self, reads: What's the Point?: “What was the point of riches, Novalis asked, if they simply made the globe spin ever faster. To romanticise the world, he suggested, is to make us see the magic and wonder of the world. The mission was to see the extraordinary in the ordinary.”
February 1, 2026 at 4:46 PM
esowteric.bsky.social
“You live like this, sheltered, in a delicate world, and you believe you are living. Then you read a book… or you take a trip… and you discover that you are not living, that you are hibernating. The symptoms of hibernating are easily detectable: first, restlessness ...”

~ Anaïs Nin, The Diary.
Image containing a text quotation, with a man laid out on a settee, sound asleep and snoring, a book still in his hand on the floor to his side. The text, from Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934, reads: Hibernation: “You live like this, sheltered, in a delicate world, and you believe you are living. Then you read a book… or you take a trip… and you discover that you are not living, that you are hibernating. The symptoms of hibernating are easily detectable: first, restlessness. The second symptom (when hibernating becomes dangerous and might degenerate into death): absence of pleasure. That is all. It appears like an innocuous illness. Monotony, boredom, death. Millions live like this (or die like this) without knowing it. They work in offices. They drive a car. They picnic with their families. They raise children. And then some shock treatment takes place, a person, a book, a song, and it awakens them and saves them from death. Some never awaken.”
February 1, 2026 at 1:52 PM
esowteric.bsky.social
“[N]othing short of super-extraordinary measures must be taken to ensure that we make it through this interregnum and ensure our survival and that of the natural world we inhabit.”

~ Preface to H.M. Forester, Beyond a Shadow of a Doubt. #Free #eBook

esowteric.vivaldi.net/2026/01/15/a...
A Little Something for Your Ark, Beyond a Shadow of a Doubt
In these increasingly dire times we have plenty of warners, but what we desperately need right now are more arks. As Michael Ventura wrote: “[A]ll of this passing things on, in all its forms…
esowteric.vivaldi.net
February 1, 2026 at 1:52 PM
esowteric.bsky.social
“Learning to see the mythic and the archetypal in the everyday world marks our entrance into a conscious relationship with the deeper forces of the cosmos, an entrance into a meaningful cosmos.”

~ Keiron Le Grice, The Archetypal Cosmos.
Parable of the Hidden Treasure: Possibly Rembrandt (1606–1669), possibly Gerrit Dou (1613–1675) / Yelkrokoyade / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0. A painting of a man in a field having just dug up a hoard of treasure, depicting the Parable of the hidden treasure.
February 1, 2026 at 1:41 PM
esowteric.bsky.social
“[E]ach of us can carry the torch of knowledge but a part of the way, until another takes it from him [or her].

“If only we could understand all this impersonally—could understand that we are not the personal creators of our truths, but ... mere mouthpieces ...”

~ CG Jung.
Image containing a text quotation, with a female walker, in the bottom right-hand corner, staff in hand, standing and admiring the view. The text, from Carl Jung, Practice of Psychotherapy, Collected Works Volume 16, reads: Pass It On: “In our delusion-ridden world a truth is so precious that nobody wants to let it slip merely for the sake of a few so-called exceptions which refuse to toe the line. “And whoever doubts this truth is invariably looked on as a faithless reprobate, so that a note of fanaticism and intolerance everywhere creeps into the discussion. “And yet each of us can carry the torch of knowledge but a part of the way, until another takes it from him [or her]. “If only we could understand all this impersonally—could understand that we are not the personal creators of our truths, but only their exponents, mere mouthpieces of the day’s psychic needs, then much venom and bitterness might be spared and we should be able to perceive the profound and supra-personal continuity of the human mind.”
February 1, 2026 at 12:29 PM
esowteric.bsky.social
Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary. ...

~ The Rainy Day, Longfellow.
Image containing a poem, with a stylised blue-bordered cloud and blue raindrop in the upper right-hand corner. The poem, The Rainy Day by Longfellow, reads: The day is cold, and dark, and dreary It rains, and the wind is never weary; The vine still clings to the mouldering wall, But at every gust the dead leaves fall, And the day is dark and dreary. My life is cold, and dark, and dreary; It rains, and the wind is never weary; My thoughts still cling to the mouldering Past, But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast, And the days are dark and dreary. Be still, sad heart! and cease repining; Behind the clouds is the sun still shining; Thy fate is the common fate of all, Into each life some rain must fall, Some days must be dark and dreary.
February 1, 2026 at 10:09 AM
Reposted by Esowteric
garylachman.bsky.social
As above, so below! Who was Hermes Trismegistus? Find out as we take a trip to ancient Alexandria this Sunday 7:00 PM GMT: www.eventbrite.com/.../ancient-....
January 31, 2026 at 11:10 AM