Corpus Hermetica

So here is my basic idea, things like Alchemy and Magic that were seriously studied throughout the Renaissance remain legitimate fields of study into the modern era. I'm not really sure how to do this, for awhile I thought I'd make Giordano Bruno founded an order of occultist-monks, but I don't think he had the temperament.

I'm also not saying that people in this time line will be able to make fire balls or anything like that, but I would see science becoming mixed in with various occult and Hermetic ideas. It may only affect technical jargon however.

I also had the idea that we could try something along the lines of Martin Luther working Kabbalistic notions into Protestantism, but again that may be a stretch. I'm just tossing around ideas and I'd like it to be plausible.
 
How about this?

During the late Reinassaunce, early Reformation, a group of Christian mystics began developing a theology that would eventually be called Enochianism. They embraced aspects of the Corpus Hermeticum, but were mostly known for working in theories of the Kabbalah. The Catholic Church tolerated them for awhile until they were later declared heretics. This group would eventually spread out, gaining some ground in England and eventually retreating to the New World, were it would later be adopted by a few of the founding fathers, such as Benjamin Franklin.

Okay, that's a start. Still doesn't work Alchemy as a legitimate field of study but I like the idea of Enochianism as a religion. Let's see if we can role with that.
 
The problem is alchemy and magic can't remain serious fields in modern times due to the development of serious sciences. In ancient times, alchemy was the science. Rather than being composed of molecules, things were thought to be made up of the base elements or mixtures of the base elements, but so tiny they could not be seen. And naturally, these things would take on the properties of the elements they were made up of. However, with the discoveries made of molecules in modern science, not to mention criticism that came in the 1700's stating that alchemical explanations were overtly simplistic, and did not take into account natural complexities, alchemy died.

A similar thing happened with magic, which was supposed to explain that which could not be explained. The problem is, science has explained what magic once did.
 

Susano

Banned
Well, theology is still a study field, too. Hermeticism could be similar - the sources are fictional, but a study field can be built from those sources.
 
I don't mean to be,well what is the term, anyway I think early civilization was bassed on religion so its hard to disscuss what would have happend,nothing at all might have happend
 
Well, theology is still a study field, too. Hermeticism could be similar - the sources are fictional, but a study field can be built from those sources.

True, philosophy and theology are studied. Some philosophy is comparable to what the OP is looking for.
 
Alright, seems to be taking of a bit. So I think the first problem we should deal with his how do we set up one or more places were this would be studied. There are two big problems to this, one is the Church and the other is the guy who would initially date the Corpus Hermeticum. I'll try and explain as much as I can.

The Corpus Hermeticum is a series of writings said to be attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, or Thrice-Great Hermes. It dealt with what we would now call magic and was likely written by 2nd or 3rd century pagans. For a long time it was lost, but commentaries on it were known. It began to be seen as an interesting lost text. It was eventually rediscovered in the Renaissance, were the Medici had it translated into Italian so they could read it. It became a big influence on such Reinassaunce thinkers such as Picco della Mirandola and Giordano Bruno.

At some point during the Reformation a Protestant guy who's name I can't remember right now discovered how to date ancient greek and latin texts and figured out the real date of the Corpus Hermeticum. After that the Corpus Hermeticum lost alot of it's prestige. For the ability to date texts doesn't come along for awhile or we work up a body of work that would build up Hermetic thought, as well as maybe translating it into a way that wouldn't threaten more conservative elements of the Church. I figure the Enochianists could come up with some kind of text that can work for this.

Also, a major part of this is the Catholic Church, and probably various Protestants. The Catholic Church is not going to be comfortable with this being to put forth, so either we're going to half to create a Christianized version of this (bonus points for whoever can make the Jesuits a major purveyor of this), or find a safe environment were they can get away with a lot of shit. I was thinking that we could try building up various "Academies," of this kind of stuff, particularly in England. I was thinking at somepoint between 1583 - 1585, John Dee and Giordano Bruno meet each other and begin exchanging ideas. Giordano Bruno stays in England to help found the first of the Academies with John Dee.

We could also do something were Giordano is able to seduce King James so that he doesn't turn on them for witchcraft. Maybe even talk King James that they could help them track down "black witches" or something like that. Again, I'm throwing around ideas.
 
Isn't the problem with alchemy that it never does produce anything, though? Or at least, nothing of any real value. You're never going to be able to produce rare metals from non-rare, and the most you actually can do is make alloys and pass them off as magic. The problem is, the philosophy of alchemy relies on the underlying assumption that any material can be turned into any other material because of the way that alchemists claimed the world worked, with every object being a mix of the same elements (not the type of elements we think of) but in different quantities. You can go on for a while but as time passes and things like society becomes more open, stuff like this becomes commercialised etc, there's no escaping the fact that the failures of alchemy are going to be leaked to the public. Eventually there's going to come a point when someone is going to say "we haven't made gold in 1,000 years of trying and we never will; it's not possible". When that happens the whole principle of alchemy is going to be blown out of the water and won't be able to recover.
 
If it shifted away from the physical world to the mind or at least psychosomatic phenomena (mind over matter, placebo effect,) lie-detecting, controlling breathing or heart rate then it might survive.
 
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If it shifted away from the physical world to the mind or at least psychosomatic phenomena (mind over matter, placebo effect,) lie-detecting, controlling breathing or heart rate then it might survive.

Yeah, that's kind of what I was thinking would happen.

Falastur says...
Isn't the problem with alchemy that it never does produce anything, though? Or at least, nothing of any real value. You're never going to be able to produce rare metals from non-rare, and the most you actually can do is make alloys and pass them off as magic. The problem is, the philosophy of alchemy relies on the underlying assumption that any material can be turned into any other material because of the way that alchemists claimed the world worked, with every object being a mix of the same elements (not the type of elements we think of) but in different quantities. You can go on for a while but as time passes and things like society becomes more open, stuff like this becomes commercialised etc, there's no escaping the fact that the failures of alchemy are going to be leaked to the public. Eventually there's going to come a point when someone is going to say "we haven't made gold in 1,000 years of trying and we never will; it's not possible". When that happens the whole principle of alchemy is going to be blown out of the water and won't be able to recover.

I was thinking that while Alchemy as we know it (i.e. turning lead into gold) would not exist as we know it, but that spiritual aspects of it would merge with modern religion, and to some extent science.
 
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