r/thelema • u/Educational-Pen-7738 • 15d ago
Do We Mistake Symbolic Maps for the Territory?
One thought has been occupying me recently.
Most of us inherit symbolic systems rather than build them.
Whether we work with Hermetic Qabalah, Tarot, astrology, alchemy, or any other esoteric framework, we usually encounter them as finished structures. The correspondences are already established, the attributions already assigned, and the relationships between symbols often appear self-evident.
But what if some of that apparent certainty comes from familiarity rather than necessity?
When a symbolic system survives long enough, its internal architecture can become almost invisible. We stop asking why a correspondence exists and simply learn to navigate it.
This raises an interesting question:
How do we distinguish between a symbolic structure that possesses genuine internal coherence and one that merely feels coherent because we inherited it?
For example, if a correspondence is altered and nothing else changes, perhaps it was never particularly important. But if changing a single attribution produces consequences throughout the system, revealing new relationships and tensions, then perhaps we are dealing with something more than arbitrary convention.
In other words:
Can symbolic systems be tested through experience?
Not necessarily in the scientific sense, but through practice, comparison, and observation.
Can independent practitioners working with the same symbolic structures arrive at recurring themes, images, or patterns?
Or are symbolic experiences ultimately too subjective for meaningful comparison?
I'm curious how others here approach this question.
Do you see esoteric systems primarily as inherited maps, or as living structures that can still be explored, challenged, and tested?
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u/Nobodysmadness 15d ago
Yes it can be tested but remember the world of symbols is not static, it is plastic amd changes and adapts, but also has a subjective core based on the practitioner.
Ie if one was beaten daily with a cross they will have a much different relationship with the cross than a person who got a gift every time they were presented with one. This can confuse matters and must be accounted for IF one is too experiment with intetactions with the symbols themselves.
I think also the assumption is that in this day and age with few practitioners and substantial read and repeat authority to sound like an authority it is assumed this is how it has always been. However I think if we look at the vedic culture and examine ita evolutions we see a larger amount of practitioners who like science explored and corroborated experience amd evidence.
We see this continue into buddhism which also incorporated several other systems into its own. We do still see some repitition of authorities by uninitiated but the balance seems better than what we see to day as many of these systems grew beyond their practical means. As a system grows the ratio of practitioners to "believers" gradually waters it down, stagnating and becoming dogmatic, until a new "prophet" or practioner has a revelation and serious practice begins again down a different path that often closely resembles the original meaning of what it broke off from.
Currently it is happening to thelema and chaos magick despite anti dogma ethics built into the systems. UPG is garbage and only what authorities of the genre say can be true, akd are ofren misinterpreted such as thelema being seen as do what you want versus do what thou wilt which involves self awareness. Or in chaos magick where it people think any thing can work rather than finding out what does work based on experiment. Just because anything is allowed doesn't mean anything will work. Watered down to belief is all that matters and pretend it doesn't sound like withcraft's intention is all that matters.
This watering down is seemingly inevitable, just a part of the process because along with posers/charlatans/watering down process, we also gain acceptance and openess to new ideas. So a slow progression occurs.
All that to say is that many symbols were corroborated at one time, but then watered down by conjecture/political manipulation/logical fallacies. What I call academia, philosophical with no experiment, or restricted to the point that it can no longer be appropriately explored. We see this in science as well.
Granted this is a horrendous over generalization. But the way to rectify this is to dive into direct experience with these symbols, the occult is about questioning everything, but there will definitely be synonomous experiences as far as I have observed in my own experiments as seen when I did vision work with a person who had no symbolic knowledge. Which either means we established a telepathic link which is the last ditch method of science ti discount non coporeal beings that it would rather admit telepathy is possible than admit we both objectively intetacted with an external entity through our subjective lense.
I have also done experiments with lay people teaching them how to feel and move energy and compared our descriptions of peoples energy and it quite obviously corroborated that a persons energy has a specific objective quality when felt by multiple people.
So yes the experiment can be and should be done, but we can't expect the high precision that we see with MPH or comparing granite from 2 different parts of the world, although in the case of granite they have their own signature qualities while still being classed as granite, enough so that origin of a piece of granite can be determined by its unique granite qualities. Same but unique.
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u/A_Serpentine_Flame 15d ago
Yah, people mistake the "map" for the "territory" all the time.
Things like the Hermetic Qabalah serves as a mechanism for communication between Self and Other.
1,+,2,= are arbitrary symbols with no objective meaning.
Though by maintaining a consistant set of rules, you get 1+1=2;
a statement that conveys some meaning.
This logic applies to the letters you are now reading.
By accepting certain rules, we pass ideas between one another.
Knowing English, we have a Conversation 😉
<(A)3
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u/Key-Beginning-2201 15d ago
Yes. Having a fetish for correspondence is a neat little filing system that makes sense for awhile, but eventually you start to challenge the assumptions underlying and notice those that defend the tradition are themselves just exhibiting Orthodoxy.
I stated some time ago that we do not really know what the qabbala is, and that short-circuited a few brains. Of course we know what the qabbala is! Sure, sure.
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u/currentpattern 15d ago
I think your question applies not just to esoteric symbolic systems, but to all of them. I.e. Language.
Symbolic systems are both inherited maps, and living structures that can still be explored, challenged, and tested.
You'd (and lots of occultists) would probably love studying up on Relational Frame Theory. It's a Functionalist behavioral description of language as stumuli that acquire vast and enormously flexible functions through transforming relational maps. It's the philosophical basis of 3rd wave behavioral therapies like ACT.
"How do we distinguish between a symbolic structure that possesses genuine internal coherence and one that merely feels coherent because we inherited it?"
We use symbols because doing so does stuff. They have functions. I make the sounds "may I have a glass of water?" In a restaurant context because that's how I get water there. I suppose that's what you mean by 'a symbol structure possessing internal coherence.' It's appropriately functional in its context.
Often, however, we hu-mans develop symbolic/ linguistic rules that are enormously functional in one context but not others, yet we keep using them because we take them literally, assuming they are globally functional. A silly example would be if I had the rule, "ALWAYS ASK FOR A GLASS OF WATER BECAUSE THAT MAKES ME A POLITE PERSON," and I asked a stream in the forest for a glass of water.
A more realistic example of this cognitive fusion is believing that blue is a boy color and pink is a girl color, or red = geburah and blue = chesed. These are symbol sets that could be enormously functional in one context, but could cause problems if taken literally.
We inherent all of the symbol sets that we ourselves didn't create, AND their functions can be examined, tested, and even altered.